Incorrigibility Incorrigibility In philosophy, incorrigibility is a property of a philosophical proposition, which implies that it is necessarily true simply by virtue of being believed. A common example of such a proposition is René Descartes' "cogito ergo sum" ("I think, therefore I am"). Johnathan Harrison has argued that "incorrigible" may be the wrong term, since it seems to imply (by the dictionary definition) a sense that the beliefs cannot be "changed", which isn't actually true. In Harrison's view, the incorrigibility of a proposition actually implies something about the nature of "believing"—for example, that one must exist in order to believe—rather than
Cogito and the History of Madness 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 appendix added to the 1972 edition of the "History