JOUFFROY, THÉODORE. - French philosopher, b. at Pontets (Doubs) on 7 July 1796, d. at Paris on 1 March 1842. He first studied under the direction of his uncle abbé Jouffroy and then at the Ecole Normale, where he was a disciple of Cousin; later he taught at the Ecole and then at the Collège de France, and from 1833 he was also a member of the Chamber of Deputies.
Initially inspired by Cousin's eclecticism, he maintained a constant inclination for introspection and psychological research in a spiritualist sense. Even when he devoted himself to legal and aesthetic studies, he always held as his principal problem the study of man, of his nature and of his destiny; but he never succeeded in reaching a positive solution. For J. absolute truth is inaccessible. Science can establish the reasons for this inaccessibility, determining the limits of its own horizon and contenting itself with relative and human truths. These affirmations, frequent in the Mélanges philosophiques, lead one to see in J. a representative of that 19th-century French eclecticism which, even in its intent to resolve the human problem, never succeeded in freeing itself from the influence of relativism and skepticism.
Principal writings: Les sentiments du beau et du sublime (Paris 1816); Cours de droit naturel (2 vols., 1st ed., ibid. 1834-35); Mélanges philosophiques (1st ed., ibid. 1833). Posthumous: Nouveaux mélanges philosophiques (ibid. 1842) and Cours d'esthétique (ibid. 1843); last, the correspondence (ibid. 1901).
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Francesco Morandini