Friedrich Nietzsche Heidegger absorbed it and made it their own. It shaped their philosophical and cultural endeavor, as well as their political understanding. Weber, for example, relies on Nietzsche's perspectivism by maintaining that objectivity is still possible—but only after a particular perspective, value, or end has been established. Among his critique of traditional philosophy of Kant, Descartes and Plato in "Beyond Good and Evil", Nietzsche attacked "thing in itself" and "cogito ergo sum" ("I think, therefore I am") as unfalsifiable beliefs based on naive acceptance of previous notions and fallacies. Philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre puts Nietzsche in a high place in the history
Cogito, ergo sum familiar form of the phrase in his 1641 "Meditations on First Philosophy". The earliest written record of the phrase in Latin is in his 1644 "Principles of Philosophy", where, in a margin note (see below), he provides a clear explanation of his intent: "[W]e cannot doubt of our existence while we doubt". Fuller forms of the phrase are attributable to other authors. The phrase first appeared (in French) in Descartes's 1637 "Discourse on the Method" in the first paragraph of its fourth part: In 1641, Descartes published (in Latin) "Meditations on first philosophy" in which he referred to the proposition,