What meditation does Descartes say I think therefore I am?

Okay, so you’ve probably heard the line, “I think, therefore I am,” right? It’s practically the “To be or not to be” of philosophy. But what’s cool is that it’s not just some random thought Descartes had while staring at the ceiling. It’s actually the cornerstone of his whole philosophy, especially in his book Meditations on First Philosophy.

Now, Descartes was on a mission. He wanted to find something, anything, he could be absolutely, 100% sure about. So, he decided to go all-in on doubt. I mean, he doubted everything. Imagine questioning whether your senses are lying to you, or if you’re just stuck in some never-ending dream. He even wondered if some evil genius was messing with his head! That’s some serious skepticism.

But here’s where it gets interesting. Even if he doubted everything else, Descartes realized he couldn’t doubt the act of doubting itself. Think about it: if you’re questioning things, something has to be doing the questioning, right? Boom! “I am, I exist” pops into his head every single time he thinks about it. It’s not like he had to work it out; it just was. The “I” isn’t about having a body or anything physical, at least not at this point in his thinking. All he could be sure of was that he existed as a thinking thing – a mind, a soul, whatever you want to call it.

The “I think, therefore I am” bit isn’t some logical conclusion he arrived at; it’s more like a sudden realization. It’s the solid ground he needed, the starting point for rebuilding all his knowledge. From there, he tries to prove God exists and that our senses aren’t totally unreliable (with a few caveats, of course). So, it’s not just a catchy phrase. It’s Descartes’s way of kicking skepticism to the curb and finding a rational basis for, well, everything. Pretty ambitious, huh?