Joseph Joubert was born in Montignac (Dordogne) on May 7, 1754, the son of master surgeon Jean Joubert. The second of eight surviving children, Joubert completed his local education at the age of fourteen and was then sent to Toulouse to continue his studies. His father hoped that he would pursue a career in the law, but Joubert’s interests lay in philosophy and the classics. After graduation, he taught for several years in the school where he had been a student and then returned to Montignac for two years, without professional plans or any apparent ambitions, already suffering from the weak health that would plague him throughout his life.

In May 1778, just after his twenty-fourth birthday, Joubert moved to Paris, where he took up residence at the Hotel de Bordeaux on the rue des Francs-Bourgeois. He soon became a member of Diderot’s circle and from then until Diderot’s death in 1784 he remained very much under the philosopher’s influence. It was through Diderot that Joubert met the sculptor Pigalle and many other artists of the period. During those early years in Paris he also met Fontanes, who would remain his most intimate friend for the rest of his life. Fontanes was several years younger than Joubert, but far more ambitious and easily the most brilliant of the young provincial men who had come to make their way in Paris. Both Joubert and Fontanes frequented the literary salon of the countess Fanny de Beauharnais (whose niece later married