First principle foundationalist system of philosophy. He used the "method of doubt", now called Cartesian doubt, to systematically doubt everything he could possibly doubt, until he was left with what he saw as purely indubitable truths. Using these self-evident propositions as his axioms, or foundations, he went on to deduce his entire body of knowledge from them. The foundations are also called "a priori" truths. His most famous proposition is "Je pense, donc je suis." ("I think, therefore I am", or "Cogito ergo sum") Descartes describes the concept of a first principle in the following excerpt from the preface to the "Principles
Cogito and the History of Madness operative norms of his language and project of self-reflection. 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