What Does Descartes’ ‘I Think Therefore I Am’ Mean?
This is a maxim often reproduced. And the cogito ergo sum o, which is the same, I think therefore I am by René Descartes (1596-1650) has become a symbol of Western philosophy, to the point that many people reproduce the quote without really knowing what it refers to. Is it perhaps a succession of actions (first thinking, then being)? Or is it rather a manifestation of an absolute existence (that of the I) as the only indisputable element?
In today’s article we propose an approach to the famous Cartesian maxim, through an analysis of the core of his philosophy, and we will talk about how the I think therefore I am in philosophy in the West.
What does Descartes’ ‘I think therefore I am’ mean?
Let’s go by parts. The original phrase is in French, since Descartes was originally from France and wrote his work in this language. Thus, the quote reads as follows: je thought, donc je suis.
Is about a phrase inserted in one of the paragraphs of your Discourse of the method (1637), the work that marked a before and after in Western philosophy and that laid the foundations of modern rationalism. In the paragraph in question, the philosopher considers the existence of everything except his thought, his self, because his existence seems so obvious to him that it is not worth questioning. In this way, Descartes continues saying, since the truth that the self exists “could not be shaken by the most extravagant assumptions of the skeptics,” he decides to place it as the first truth, from which he must deduce all the others.
He I thought donc je suis it was quickly translated into Latin; he is the famous Cogito ergo sum. The Latin version fits the true intention of the philosopher much better than the Spanish one, in that it ergo establishes a cause-consequence: if I think, consequentlyI exist.
What are the problems of translating the Cartesian maxim into Spanish? Basically, the introduction of the phrase then, which serves both to designate consequence and temporal posteriority If the latter meaning is taken, what Descartes meant will not be understood at all. Because the thinker did not mean that “first I think and, later, I exist”, but rather that “as I think, consequently I exist”. Note the difference between both.
The first steps of rationalism
René Descartes is the great name of rationalism, the philosophical current that originated in the 17th century and that imbued all philosophy in the West. Rationalists defended reason as the only vehicle for truth, so elements that were not carefully analyzed and whose veracity could not be demonstrated were directly excluded.
So, Through the tools of reason, human beings are perfectly capable of understanding what surrounds them, as if it were mathematical formulas. Through the deductive method, the philosopher raises possibilities and discards them, thus remaining only with those of which he can demonstrate the existence of them through his reasoning.
The self as the first unquestionable truth
A priori, nothing seems to be demonstrable, since we can be one hundred percent sure of nothing. You are welcome? Of one thing yes. And it is, nothing more and nothing less, than our own existence. This is what Descartes refers to when he writes in his Discourse of the method that, while he was concentrating on how it was all fake, he realized that he was actually realizing it because he was thinking about it. That is there was a thinking entity that considered the existence of everything else Here is the meaning of I think therefore I am Cartesian: If I am thinking, it is because I am existing.
Descartes takes, therefore, the thinking entity that he is (the self) as the first and unquestionable truth. He is thinking, therefore no one can deny his existence. From here, a series of thoughts and deductions are unleashed, always with the self as a starting point, to demonstrate the existence of the other elements of the universe, including God.
Although the origin of this maxim has traditionally been attributed to him, the truth is that Some thinkers before René Descartes had already formulated very similar ideas Saint Augustine of Hippo (354-430), for example, already maintained in the distant 5th century (specifically, in his well-known work The city of God) that, when he was deceived, it was because he existed, since what does not exist cannot be deceived. On the other hand, at a time closer to Descartes, the humanist Gómez Pereira (1500-1567) said that he knew “something”, and, therefore, if knewbecause was. As we see, an idea even closer to the Cartesian idea of Cogito ergo sum.
It seems, therefore, that Descartes was not the first to formulate the certainty that a self that thought invariably existed. But it is no less true that It was from the work of the French philosopher that the concept gained strength and, with it, rationalism and faith in the power of reason so criticized, on the other hand, by the English empiricists championed by Hume, who maintained that the origin of knowledge is the experience of the senses.
Its influence on modern Western philosophy
He I think therefore I am laid the foundation for modern philosophy in the West. A child of the scientific revolution, rationalism put an end to the eternal dissertations of the old medieval scholasticism at a stroke, and proposed the search for knowledge as a mathematical formula. There is nothing that should be considered true a priori; is necessary the methodical doubtfrom which possibilities will be discarded and, with the help of reason (which Descartes and rationalists consider infallible) the truth will be accessed.
Rationalism is the dawn of the philosophy of the modern Western world by basing his modus operandi in a scientific praxis. And both the rationalists and the empiricists, although opposed on certain points, are the fruit of this new society that appeared at the beginning of the 17th century and that allowed the unprecedented development of scientific research.
