Mr. Cogito Mr. Cogito Mr. Cogito Mr. Cogito is a character created by Zbigniew Herbert, a Polish poet and essayist. He first appears in a poem entitled "The Envoy of Mr. Cogito" ("Przesłanie Pana Cogito") published in 1973. Initially Mr. Cogito was an Everyman, a universal element of humanity sharing his opinions on various aspects of life and existence. However, the more he says, the more disembodied he appears, and becomes transformed into an ethical symbol and a metaphor of the tough choices we have to make between good and evil. The character's name originates from Descartes' famous phrase, "Cogito ergo sum."
Cogito, ergo sum As a critic of Cartesian subjectivity, Heidegger sought to ground human subjectivity in death as that certainty which individualizes and authenticates our being. As he wrote in 1927: "This certainty, that "I myself am in that I will die," is the basic certainty of Dasein itself. It is a genuine statement of Dasein, while "cogito sum" is only the semblance of such a statement. If such pointed formulations mean anything at all, then the appropriate statement pertaining to Dasein in its being would have to be "sum moribundus" [I am in dying], "moribundus" not as someone gravely ill or wounded,