René's Response (1/17/17)

There have been countless words strung together in response to René Descartes' cryptic quote; “Cogito ergo sum”. This Latin phrase of his is usually translated as “I think, therefore I am.” For most of us who can't read or speak Latin or who are not steeped in Enlightenment philosophy, Descartes' quip sounds very erudite, but what the hell did he mean? Is its significance of any relevance to the average modern mind?

I confess to feeling rather confused when I ponder René's response. I've read numerous interpretations over the years, but comprehension of “Cogito ergo sum” still pretty much escapes me. Then I recently read an article in the New Yorker magazine that helped me get a much better handle on the meaning of this phrase, in an article by Adam Kirsch, who is on the faculty of Columbia University. What really helped me was to get some background on 17^th century thinking in Europe, to see the context in which Descartes was pondering the weighty quandaries of existence.

As the Enlightenment unfolded, the West was the world's economic, military, and intellectual leader. Western science was flowering and, in the process, was refuting much of Christianity's long-established dogma. As people's minds were being freed to open to new realities, their old truths were having to be abandoned. No, the Earth is not at the center of the universe. No, many of the supernatural explanations you've counted on for ages are now seen to be false. No, the paths of the planets are not determined by the perfection of God's “harmony of the spheres,” but by simple physical laws discovered by Isaac Newton. The list goes on.

In short, much of the old certainty was being cast aside, and it rattled many people. There were so many new facts and verities flooding the Western mind that people felt cast adrift. Where were they now supposed to anchor their convictions? Many of their previous ways of thinking were being trashed. What was reality? What was truth? What was illusion? Is there anything people could count on?

Descartes was a philosopher and many people at the time turned to philosophers—if only because these thinkers had been pondering these same questions for centuries. One of the unique qualities of philosophy is that there are no final answers to the big questions of life. Humans may have found a definitive answer in the 17^th century as to why the planets did their dance, but the same philosophical questions that had puzzled Socrates and his fellow Greek sages 2000 years earlier were still being examined and debated by Enlightenment thinkers; as they are today.

One crucial thing that science did in the Enlightenment period was that, as it led to truths, it helped people understand that our human senses give us but a partial understanding of reality. So what can I believe in? What can I count on? Descartes pondered these questions. He decided to go back to the beginning, to doubt everything, to strip one's existence to the bare bone. After doing so, he wondered if there is anything one can be certain of? Is the world real? Do my senses tell me anything about the actual world? Do I even exist?

His conclusion: the only thing I can believe in is the fact that I'm thinking; that I'm conscious. My mind—being the only thing I can experience—must be real. Without my mind, there's no me. So I am thinking, thus I must exist. He stripped it back to the basics; back to the only thing we can count on and experience: the workings of our mind. With that fundamental reality, I can then conclude that I must be. Then, with that grounding, one could rebuild one's worldview.