The Human Condition (book) but the self, Descartes and other moderns thought, could be known. Though his cogito ergo sum was anticipated by Augustine, his dubito ergo sum is original and a hallmark of modernity: beginning from doubt. The notion of common sense as a sense in which the other five were fitted to a common world ceded to a conception of common sense as an inner faculty with no relationship to the world, and the assumption that all humans had faculties like this in common became necessary to get theories going, but without the assumption of a common world, the assumption of faculties
Cogito and the History of Madness operative norms of his language and project of self-reflection. Cogito and the History of Madness "Cogito and the History of Madness" is a paper by Jacques Derrida that critically responds to Michel Foucault's book the "History of Madness". In this paper, Derrida questions the intentions and feasibility of Foucault's book, particularly in relation to the historical importance attributed by Foucault to the treatment of madness by Descartes in the "Meditations on First Philosophy". Derrida's paper began a high-profile exchange between Derrida and Foucault as well as a considerable amount of attention from scholars. Foucault responded directly to Derrida in an