Spirituality – René Descartes – Cogito Ergo Sum (Part 3)

In Descartes’s Writings

Meditations on First Philosophy

In 1641, Descartes published (in Latin) Meditations on first philosophy in which he referred to the proposition, though not explicitly as “cogito ergo sum” in Meditation II:

• Latin: “… hoc pronuntiatum: ego sum, ego existo, quoties a me profertur, vel mente concipitur, necessario esse verum.”
• English: “.. this proposition: I am, I exist, whenever it is uttered from me, or conceived by the mind, necessarily is true.”

Principles of Philosophy

In 1644, Descartes published (in Latin) his Principles of Philosophy where the phrase “ego cogito, ergo sum” appears in Part 1, article 7:

• Latin: “Sic autem rejicientes illa omnia, de quibus aliquo modo possumus dubitare, ac etiam, falsa esse fingentes, facilè quidem, supponimus nullum esse Deum, nullum coelum, nulla corpora; nosque etiam ipsos, non habere manus, nec pedes, nec denique ullum corpus, non autem ideò nos qui talia cogitamus nihil esse: repugnat enim ut putemus id quod cogitat eo ipso tempore quo cogitat non existere. Ac proinde haec cognitio, ego cogito, ergo sum, est omnium prima & certissima, quae cuilibet ordine philosophanti occurrat.”
• English: “While we thus reject all of which we can entertain the smallest doubt, and even imagine that it is false, we easily indeed suppose that there is neither God, nor sky, nor bodies, and that we ourselves even have neither hands nor feet, nor, finally, a body; but we cannot in the same way suppose that we are not while we doubt of the truth of these things; for there is a repugnance in conceiving that what thinks does not exist at the very time when it thinks. Accordingly, the knowledge, I think, therefore I am, is the first and most certain that occurs to one who philosophizes orderly.”

Descartes’s margin note for the above paragraph is:

• Latin: “Non posse à nobis dubitari, quin existamus dum dubitamus: at que hoc esse primum quod ordine philosophando cognoscimus.”
• English: “That we cannot doubt of our existence while we doubt, and that this is the first knowledge we acquire when we philosophize in order.”

Other Forms

The proposition is sometimes given as dubito, ergo cogito, ergo sum. This fuller form was penned by the eloquent French literary critic, Antoine Léonard Thomas, in an award-winning 1765 essay in praise of Descartes, where it appeared as “Puisque je doute, je pense; puisque je pense, j’existe.” In English, this is “Since I doubt, I think; since I think I exist”; with rearrangement and compaction, “I doubt, therefore I think, therefore I am”, or in Latin, “dubito, ergo cogito, ergo sum”.

A further expansion, dubito, ergo cogito, ergo sum – res cogitans (“… – a thinking thing”) extends the cogito with Descartes’s statement in the subsequent Meditation, “Ego sum res cogitans, id est dubitans, affirmans, negans, pauca intelligens, multa ignorans, volens, nolens, imaginans etiam et sentiens …”, or, in English, “I am a thinking (conscious) thing, that is, a being who doubts, affirms, denies, knows a few objects, and is ignorant of many …”. This has been referred to as “the expanded cogito”.

Luc Paquin