I think, therefore I am.
René Descartes Discourse on the Method, Part IV (1637)
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When and why it was written
- When
- Published anonymously in Leiden in 1637.
- Why
- Descartes had doubted everything he could doubt and needed one thing that survived the process.
What it means
The sentence is a survivor, not a slogan. Descartes had discarded the senses, mathematics and the external world as potentially deceived.
What could not be discarded was the doubting. A deceived thought is still a thought, and a thought requires a thinker. The certainty is thin on purpose: it is the only thing left standing, and the rest of the method is built from it.
Our reading of the passage cited above, not a quotation from a commentary.
Read the source
Discourse on the Method, 1637
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