Cartesian Self Cartesian Self In philosophy, the Cartesian Self, part of a thought experiment, is an individual's mind, separate from the body and the outside world, thinking about itself and its existence. It is distinguished from the Cartesian Other, anything other than the Cartesian self. According to the philosopher Descartes, there is a divide intrinsic to consciousness, such that one cannot ever bridge the space between one's own consciousness and that of another. Descartes concluded famously that Cogito ergo sum, "I think, therefore I am", but realized that according to his wax argument you could never similarly demonstrate the existence of the
Cogito and the History of Madness translation of the text into English as "Madness and Civilization". The abridged 1964 edition removed the pages concerning Descartes on which Derrida had explicitly based his argument in "Cogito and the History of Madness." These pages on Descartes were only made available in English with Jean Khalfa's 2006 translation of Foucault's work on madness. Derrida makes an allusion to the master–slave dialectic in Hegel's "Phenomenology of Spirit" in the opening pages of "Cogito and the History of Madness." Foucault writes at the start of the second chapter of the "History of Madness" of a strange violent event that silenced madness