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Full Idea
I concluded that I was a substance, of which the whole essence or nature consists in thinking, and which, in order to exist, needs no place and depends on no material thing.
Gist of Idea
I am a thinking substance, which doesn't need a place or material support
Source
René Descartes (A Discourse on Method [1637], §4.33)
Book Ref
Descartes,René: 'Discourse on Method/The Meditations', ed/tr. Sutcliffe,F.E. [Penguin 1968], p.54
A Reaction
To me that sounds like "I concluded that I wasn't a human being", which highlights the bizarre wishful thinking that seems to have gripped the human race for the first few thousand years of its serious thinking.
Related Idea
Idea 18462 The soul is everywhere and nowhere in the body, and must be its cause [Porphyry]
| 276 | My individuality is my soul, which carries my body around [Plato] |
| 3609 | I am a thinking substance, which doesn't need a place or material support [Descartes] |
| 5627 | I can express the motion of my body in a single point, but that doesn't mean it is a simple substance [Kant] |
| 16002 | The self is a combination of pairs of attributes: freedom/necessity, infinite/finite, temporal/eternal [Kierkegaard] |
| 15811 | I am picked out uniquely by my individual essence, which is 'being identical with myself' [Chisholm] |