Cartesian Other Cartesian Other In philosophy, the Cartesian Other, part of a thought experiment, is any other than the mind of the individual thinking about the experiment. The Other includes the individual's own body. According to the philosopher Descartes, there is a divide intrinsic to consciousness, such that you cannot ever bridge the space between your own consciousness and that of another. This "other" is in essence theoretical, since one cannot ever be empirically shown such an "other." Put differently, Descartes concluded "cogito ergo sum", "I think, therefore I am," that is, that the presence of a self of which to speak
Cogito and the History of Madness his point of departure for "Cogito and the History of Madness" is Foucault's 1961 book "Folie et déraison". Derrida's paper primarily relies on two sections of Foucault's work, the original 1961 preface in which Foucault makes a number of general comments about the book, setting forth his intentions and methodology, and two and a half pages at the start of the second chapter where Foucault links Descartes to an historical event that silenced madness at the end of the classical age. Foucault's 1961 text was heavily abridged for a popular edition in 1964 that formed the basis for Richard Howard's