Subjectivism given consciousness is dependent on that consciousness. This has its philosophical basis in the writings of Descartes (see "cogito ergo sum"), and forms a cornerstone of Søren Kierkegaard's philosophy. Recently, more modest versions of metaphysical subjectivism have been explored. For example, I might hold that it is a "fact" that chocolate is tasty, even though I recognize that it is not tasty to everyone. This would imply that there are facts that are "subjective". (Analogously, one might hold that it is a fact that it is winter in the Northern Hemisphere, even though this is not always the case, implying
Cogito and the History of Madness at the end of the renaissance and the beginning of the classical age. He then discusses the treatment of madness by Descartes in the "Meditations on First Philosophy". Foucault argues that Descartes refuses to recognise a commonality between himself and people who are mad and uses this dissociation as an excuse not to take madness seriously as a grounds for doubt. For Foucault this exclusion of madness by Descartes leads to a cogito that is more or less arbitrarily self-assured of its own rationality. Derrida argues that Descartes might appear to dismiss madness at the point of the meditation to