Being and Nothingness it has been suggested that it usually went unread by them. Sartre's reflections on slime ("le visqueux") have been described as celebrated. Sartre's existentialism shares its philosophical starting point with René Descartes: The first thing we can be aware of is our existence, even when doubting everything else (Cogito ergo sum). In "Nausea", the main character's feeling of dizziness towards his own existence is induced by things, not thinking. This dizziness occurs "in the face of one's freedom and responsibility for giving a meaning to reality". As an important break with Descartes, Sartre rejects the "primacy of knowledge", as summed
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