# The cogito survives the attempt to doubt it

Commentary on Orthodoxy by G. K. Chesterton.

On [CH03.P011](https://glosses.org/orthodoxy/pg16769-r1/CH03.P011/#char=1097,1139): "Descartes said, "I think; therefore I am.""

The words reproduce the familiar English form of Descartes's conclusion in part IV of the *Discourse on Method* (first published in French, 1637). In John Veitch's translation, inspected here through Project Gutenberg, Descartes first supposes that sensory experience, reasoning and waking perceptions might all deceive him. He then finds that the very attempt to think everything false requires the existence of the thinker. The cogito is the point where doubt establishes something it cannot consistently destroy. [Descartes, *Discourse*, part IV](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/59/59-h/59-h.htm).

Chesterton's invented reversal makes his opponent's conclusion disable the activity that produced it. This is a pointed comparison with Descartes's method, rather than a quotation from an evolutionist. Descartes subsequently argues that the self is a thinking substance distinct from the body, but that further claim should be distinguished from the immediate certainty that thinking requires existence. Chesterton's epigram does not itself demonstrate that biological change eliminates either certainty or the thinker.

## Sources

- [René Descartes, A Discourse on Method, translated by John Veitch; Project Gutenberg eBook 59](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/59/59-h/59-h.htm), Part IV, paragraphs beginning 'Accordingly, seeing that our senses', 'But immediately upon this', and 'In the next place, I attentively examined'

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