Cogito, ergo sum

I’m sure many of has have pondered about the meaning of Rene Descartes’ famous statement: cogito, ergo sum (“I think, therefore I am”). But what did he really mean? I’ve experienced this statement as a polarising one. Can it be, that he was suggesting something deeper that what’s immediately visible?

Option A

I’ve seen spiritually inclined people lose their nerve over how can the “being” be conditioned by thinking. And I was no exception. Really speaking, existence can’t be conditioned by anything. What is simply is. A blade of grass is, even though it hardly can think. So is a stone. Or some people… But was Rene Descartes, supposedly one of the biggest thinkers humanity has ever produced, really ignorant of this rather obvious fact?

Option 1/A

Maybe he meant something else. If being cannot be conditioned the crux of the statement must have to do with “thinking”. And there is two kinds of “thinking”, both of which often gets confused with the other.

Believing

For majority of people thinking means accepting knowledge and repeating it (without actually thinking). What’s the criterion of accepting the knowledge? Basically the fact if they like it or not. Example: the WOKE movement. It fights for equality of human beings. The idea is noble - basically it is an attempt to reconstruct the paradise. But humans aren’t equal and their idea is not based on reality. Rather on their likes and dislikes, which are so strong, that facts get ignored…

Thinking

But then there is something like thinking. Or critical thinking, if you want. It is the examination of all the known in order to eliminate contradictions. What I know I confront with everything else I know. And if there is a discrepancy, I accept that which is true, and not what I wish to be. This is how falsehood is recognized. And if we do this this process repetitively for some time, in the end only that which is always true will remain - Truth itself. And this is thinking, which carries the spirit of Socrates who said, “the unexamined life is not worth living.”

Final Words

In the end what Rene Descartes really meant only he will know. What matters more for me is what I think of his statement. Was this man just blind to the obvious because of the ignorance of his times? No, for me he is not an outlier, but a one of the giants upon whose shoulders our civilization is founded.