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Single Idea 5587

[from 'Meditations' by René Descartes, in 11. Knowledge Aims / B. Certain Knowledge / 5. Cogito Critique ]

Full Idea

If anyone asks me: What is the constitution of a thing that thinks? I do not know how to answer a priori, because the answer ought to be synthetic (for an analytic answer explains thinking, but gives no cognition of that on which thinking rests).

Gist of Idea

We cannot give any information a priori about the nature of the 'thing that thinks'

Source

comment on René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §2.26) by Immanuel Kant - Critique of Pure Reason A398

Book Reference

Kant,Immanuel: 'Critique of Pure Reason', ed/tr. Guyer,P /Wood,A W [CUO 1998], p.440


A Reaction

This has always seemed a problem with Descartes' very thin account of his 'res cogitans', but then what exactly does Kant want to know? Is it a metaphysical disaster if we think of the self as having no more identity than a geometrical point?