Quotation
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“I am a thing that thinks.”
René Descartes · Rationalism · Early modern · 1641
What does it mean?
The usual reading takes the sentence as the answer to what the existing thing is, once bodily descriptions have been set aside as still doubtful: it is a thinking thing, and thinking covers a wide set of mental acts, not only silent reasoning. A rival reading hears a proof that a person is only a mind, a ghost in a machine, but at this point in the Meditations the body has not been proved, and it has not been proved unreal either. The sentence is a few pages after the existence claim, still inside the Second Meditation.
Did René Descartes really say this?
The library’s label is Paraphrase or translation. Cottingham's translation of the Second Meditation, Adam and Tannery volume seven, page 28. Thinking includes doubting, understanding, affirming, denying, willing, refusing, imagining, and sensing. The Latin is res cogitans. This wording is a translation.
Where it comes from
Meditations II (AT VII 28)
Approximate date: 1641.
How to use it
Filling a form in a job centre in Hull that asks for a body, a postcode, and a work history, someone can still notice that doubting the form is itself an act not listed in the boxes. Descartes would call that act thinking, in a wide sense that includes the doubt and the irritation. The form is not thereby false; It is incomplete as a statement of what, in his interim conclusion, is known to exist.
A mindset reading
The sentence is not a lifestyle of living in one's head, and it is not yet his full account of a human being. Later he will argue that mind and body are distinct and that they are united in a person, and both claims cause trouble he does not pretend to dissolve with this line. Quoting it as if he had said the body does not matter skips the sixth meditation; Quoting it as a mere mood skips the argument.
Understand the philosophy
The key term is a thinking thing, res cogitans, a thing that doubts, understands, wills, imagines, and senses, as he lists the modes. The Second Meditation uses a piece of wax to show that even bodies, if they are known, are known by the mind's judgement more than by a single sensory snapshot. Cottingham's English is the standard. The claim is an interim result under methodical doubt, not the last page of the book.
- mind
- self
- knowledge
FAQ
What does it mean?
The usual reading takes the sentence as the answer to what the existing thing is, once bodily descriptions have been set aside as still doubtful: it is a thinking thing, and thinking covers a wide set of mental acts, not only silent reasoning. A rival reading hears a proof that a person is only a mind, a ghost in a machine, but at this point in the Meditations the body has not been proved, and it has not been proved unreal either. The sentence is a few pages after the existence claim, still inside the Second Meditation.
Did René Descartes really say this?
Paraphrase or translation. Cottingham's translation of the Second Meditation, Adam and Tannery volume seven, page 28. Thinking includes doubting, understanding, affirming, denying, willing, refusing, imagining, and sensing. The Latin is res cogitans. This wording is a translation.
Which work is it in?
Meditations II (AT VII 28) Approximate date: 1641.