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 and let him deceive me as much as he can, he will never bring it about that I am nothing, so long as I think that I am something. So, after considering everything very thoroughly, I must finally conclude that the proposition, "I am, I exist," is necessarily true whenever it is put forward by me or conceived in my mind. (AT VII 25; CSM II 16–17) There are three important notes to keep in mind here. First, he claims only the certainty of "his own" existence from the first-person point of view — he has not proved the existence