Re: KuJomu - the writing

En réponse à bnathyuw <bnathyuw@...>:

>
> your point on the formation of the cogito probably
> explains why i could never come across the original
> source when searching for 'cogito ergo sum'
>
Yep :)) . "E=mc2" and "cogito ergo sum" must be the two most common misquotes
in the world :)) .

> as to the point about equivalence rather than
> consequence, i had always taken the |ergo| to mark
> rhetorical consequence rather than logical : 'i have
> concluded that i think, i can therefore conclude that
> i am'.
Nope, and Descartes makes it quite clear in his answers to the critiques
towards the Méditations Métaphysiques. The fact that "I am" is not concluded
from the fact that "I think". They necessarily go together, as a single
principle. Descartes himself was extremely unhappy to see his original
statement so often misquoted.

>
> as to the original language, the reason i pointed out
> that the original was in french was that when i was
> studying descartes i wanted to track down the original
> text ( in the original language ) and was more than
> surprised to discover that it was in french rather
> than latin. according to the source i got this from (
> and it could well be wrong ) descartes himself went on
> to translate the meditations into latin to give the
> text an audience wider than that which the french
> version could reach ( ie an international educated
> audience ). i seem to remember this was published in
> the netherlands
>
It is true that he published most of his works in the Netherlands (where his
lived 23 years). But if you look at
http://agora.qc.ca/mot.nsf/Dossiers/Rene_Descartes (in French, sorry :(( ),
you'll see that it's his "Discours de la méthode" which was originally written
in French (he got very bad press among scholars for that :)) ).
His "Meditationes de prima Philosophia in qua Dei existentia et animae
immortalitas demonstrantur": "Meditations about the first Philosophy where the
existence of God and the immortality of the soul are demonstrated" were first
written in Latin (in 1641) and translated in French by Luyne in 1647. There are
six years between the two versions (other translations, usually more accurate,
have appeared since then), and the Latin version is usually the first. I think
you or your source confused the "Méditations Métaphysiques" with the "Discours
de la méthode" (although the "Discours" is often seen as an introduction to
the "Meditationes", it was published 4 years before them).

> this could all be wrong, but it's certainly what the
> source said ( which annoyingly i've forgotten ) and i
> remember it clearly because i was quite surprised
>
Well, this source was definitely wrong. It probably confused the "Discours"
with the "Meditationes".

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

Take your life as a movie: do not let anybody else play the leading role.

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