The HBS hosts don their nightgowns, cozy up to the fire, and contemplate wax.
There is, perhaps, no more famous statement in the history of philosophy than Rene Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am.” This conclusion is reached in the Second of Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy and is seen as one of the crowning achievements of modern philosophy, at least that kind of philosophy usually called “rationalism.” In fact, this claim can be said to be the founding moment of a trajectory in philosophy that goes from Descartes, through Spinoza and Leibniz, Kant and Hegel, into Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology. It has been the target of a great deal of criticism as well. Some insist it is the origin of a dualism of mind and body. Others insist that it is the founding moment of a kind of subjectivity that is set over and against the material world. And others point to the class antagonism that is contained in the statement. Enrique Dussel goes so far as to insist that before there is the “ego cogito” there is the “ego conquero.” What does Descartes actually argue in this founding text? How does he conclude that “I exist as long as I am thinking?” And what consequences does he draw. Let’s bring Descartes into the bar and ask him WTF?
Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/decartes-second-meditation/
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