Definition of cogito in English:
cogito
noun ˈkoɡɪtəʊˈkodʒɪtəʊˈkäj-
usually the cogitoPhilosophy The principle establishing the existence of a being from the fact of its thinking or awareness.
Augustine gives a memorable earlier version of the Cartesian cogito
Example sentencesExamples
- The cogito shows that there is a thought, but not that there is an I who thinks it.
- Even the most forcefully experienced insights - save the cogito - become open to doubt once the immediacy of the intuition passes.
- It is because of this that Descartes erroneously took the cogito to be the foundation of certainty in human knowledge, and our knowledge of body to be less clear and less immediate.
- This missing element is the self, or subject: the focal point of Descartes reasoning, whose existence was established by the cogito.
- The Cartesian cogito played a major part in promoting the scientific and rational development of the Enlightenment in the 18th century.
Origin
Latin, 'I think', in Descartes's formula (1641) cogito, ergo sum 'I think therefore I am'.