ABSTRACT
Irving Babbitt counts the French moralist Joseph Joubert (1754-1824), no less than Matthew Arnold, among the "keen-sighted few." Joseph Joubert's writings on ethics, politics, theology, and literature reveal the dignity of criticism. To be sure, Joubert has certain limitations, and one must not "accord him privileges too far beyond our common humanity." He is, for example, "too resolutely traditional" in politics and religion. Joubert disclosed both control of language and courage of judgment in this sentence: "Revolutions are times when the poor man is not sure of his probity, the rich man of his fortune and the innocent man of his life." The general public was concerned Joubert himself lived in entire obscurity, more "enamored," in his own phrase, "of perfection than of glory." The literary Pensees how such a fine quality of critical insight that Joubert has come to be regarded as the critics' critic much as Spenser has been called the poets' poet.
