The concept of the Cartesian cogito

Title

The concept of the Cartesian cogito

Description

The example of one of the best-known signed philo­sophical concepts, that of the Cartesian cogito, Descartes's I: a concept of self. This concept has three components—­doubting, thinking, and being (although this does not mean that every concept must be triple). The complete statement of the concept qua multiplicity is "I think 'therefore' I am" or, more completely, "Myself who doubts, I think, I am, I am a thinking thing." According to Descartes the cogito is the always-renewed event of thought. The concept condenses at the point I, which passes through all the components and in which I' (doubting), I" (thinking), and I"' (being) coincide. As intensive ordinates the compo­nents are arranged in zones of neighborhood or indiscernibil­ity that produce passages from one to the other and constitute their inseparability. The first zone is between doubting and thinking (myself who doubts, I cannot doubt that I think), and the second is between thinking and being (in order to think it is necessary to be).

Designer

Deleuze, Gilles

Guattari, Félix

Date

1991

Source

What is Philosophy?

Bibliographic Citation

Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari. 1994. What Is Philosophy? Translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Graham Burchell. Columbia University Press. Example 1. Pages 24-25.

Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari. 1991. Qu'est-ce que la philosophic? Les Editions de Minuit.

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Dash Line

Solid Line

depict things of type

Conceptual

Coverage

philosophy