From the book
The Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volumes I–II
Joseph Joubert · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Orientation
At a Glance
- The wordWings make unsupported movement and elevation imaginable.
- In JoubertCommon minds without wings require fixed supports even where exact determination would be error.
- In this editionThe English translation retains the literal wings and feet and the short-wing qualification.
- A place to beginWings allow a mind to remain in space without fabricated supports.
- English renderings
- wing; wings
Meaning
Wings make unsupported movement and elevation imaginable. Their contrast with feet can praise freedom, expose limitation, or identify a missing practical capacity.
Use in the book
Common minds without wings require fixed supports even where exact determination would be error. Bonald’s mind, in another comparison, has no wings—or only short ones that improve walking rather than permit flight. The revision within that sentence matters: the image is qualified instead of simply withdrawn. Conversely, the address to someone with wings and no feet does not present wings as a sufficient excellence. It is followed by alternative ways of entering truths and by the warning that space can impress and deceive. These different uses resist a single rule that more flight is always better.
Places to read
- I, p. 162, entry 8, ¶1Wings allow a mind to remain in space without fabricated supports.
- II, p. 611, entry 4, ¶1Bonald’s wings are absent or limited to assisting walking.
- II, p. 569, entry 9, ¶1Wings without feet leave another capacity missing.
Translation in this edition
The English translation retains the literal wings and feet and the short-wing qualification. It distinguishes imposer from en imposer as impressing and deceiving, without deciding that space must mean book length or prestige. The images are not assigned to a fixed psychological classification.
Source note
Beaunier 1938, I, pp. 162; II, pp. 569, 611.