Joseph Joubert was a French essayist, philosopher, and prose writer, born in Montignac-Lascaux in May 1754.

The date of his birth is recorded variously as the seventh or the seventeenth of that month, an ambiguity preserved in the historical record. He wrote in French throughout his career, working across the registers of philosophical reflection and literary prose, and he died in Paris on the fourth of May, 1824.

During his lifetime, Joubert received formal recognition from the French state in the form of two distinctions: the Knight of the Legion of Honour and the Knight in the Order of the Reunion. These honors placed him within the official cultural and civic life of his era, acknowledging a career conducted through the written word. His work circulated in French, and he is catalogued consistently across scholarly and bibliographic authority files under the name Joubert, Joseph, with the dates 1754 to 1824 serving as the primary coordinates of his identity in the record.

What the documentary evidence returns to, across those authority files and catalogues, is the pairing of his name with the designations of essayist and philosopher — categories that define the sustained orientation of his writing life. Philosophical inquiry and essayistic prose in the French language mark the work he left behind, and it is within those forms that his place in the written record remains fixed.