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 and the History of Madness at the end of the renaissance and the beginning of the classical age. He then discusses the treatment of madness by Descartes in the "Meditations on First Philosophy". Foucault argues that Descartes refuses to recognise a commonality between himself and people who are mad and uses this dissociation as an excuse not to take madness seriously as a grounds for doubt. For Foucault this exclusion of madness by Descartes leads to a cogito that is more or less arbitrarily self-assured of its own rationality. Derrida argues that Descartes might appear to dismiss madness at the point of the meditation to