VII explained

What happens

Themes in this chapter

• Cogito Ergo Sum (I Think, Therefore I Am)

  The central theme of the chapter: the indubitable self-awareness that survives universal doubt.

• Skepticism and Certainty

  The chapter demonstrates how radical skepticism leads to the first certainty—the existence of the thinking self.

Characters to notice

• Narrator

  The philosophical 'I' that doubts and thereby affirms its own existence.

• René Descartes

  The author and thinker presenting the argument that doubt implies existence.

• God

  Mentioned as something we can suppose does not exist, but the doubt itself still confirms the doubter's existence.

Key passages

• “While we thus reject all of which we can entertain the smallest doubt, and even imagine that it is false, we easily indeed suppose that there is neither God, nor sky, nor bodies, and that we ourselves even have neither hands nor feet, nor, finally, a body; but we cannot in the same way suppose that we are not while we doubt of the truth of these things; for there is a repugnance in conceiving that what thinks does not exist at the very time when it thinks.”

  Even if we doubt everything—God, the sky, our own body—we cannot doubt that we exist while we are doubting, because it is contradictory to think that a thinking thing does not exist at the moment it thinks.

  This passage articulates the indubitable foundation of self-awareness that survives universal doubt.

• “Accordingly, the knowledge, 'I think, therefore I am,' is the first and most certain that occurs to one who philosophizes orderly.”

  Thus, the proposition 'I think, therefore I am' is the first and most certain truth for anyone who philosophizes in a methodical way.

  This states the cogito as the foundational principle of Descartes' philosophy.