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 Translation needs a larger context to determine aspect. Following John Lyons (1982), Vladimir Žegarac notes, "The temptation to use the simple present is said to arise from the lack of progressive forms in Latin and French, and from a misinterpretation of the meaning of "cogito" as habitual or generic." (Cf. gnomic aspect.) Ann Banfield writes (also following Lyons), "In order for the statement on which Descartes's argument depends to represent certain knowledge, … its tense must be a true present—in English, a progressive, … not as 'I think' but as 'I am thinking, in conformity with the general translation of