PhilosophersRené Descartes

René Descartes

Doubt everything to find what survives doubt.

Rationalism1596 – 1650 FranceRationalistDualistTheistMathematician
Je pense, donc je suis
I think, therefore I am.
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Ego sum, ego existo
I am, I exist. This is the wording of the Meditations : "cogito, ergo sum" does not appear there.
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Le bon sens est la chose du monde la mieux partagée
Good sense is the most fairly distributed thing in the world.
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nous rendre comme maîtres et possesseurs de la nature
to make ourselves, as it were, masters and possessors of nature.
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Misconceptions

False
"Cogito, ergo sum" comes from the Meditations.

The Meditations say "Ego sum, ego existo". The French "je pense, donc je suis" is in the Discourse (1637); the Latin "ego cogito, ergo sum" appears in the Principles (1644).

False
Descartes was a sceptic who doubted everything.

He uses doubt as a method to refute the sceptics: his first principle is precisely what "the most extravagant suppositions of the sceptics" cannot shake.

Nuanced
For Descartes, animals are machines that feel nothing.

He does hold that the animal body works like a machine and that animals lack thought. But in his letters (not yet collected) he grants them life and a kind of organ-based sensation. The interpretation is still debated.

Nuanced
Descartes invented the "I think, therefore I am" idea.

Saint Augustine had already written "if I am mistaken, I exist" (City of God XI, 26). Arnauld pointed this out to Descartes in the Fourth Objections. Descartes, however, makes it the foundation of a whole system.