New York Dada known and controversial across the New York, as well as American in general, art scene. His personality was equally intoxicating as his art; according to Richter, "Duchamp's attitude is that life is a melancholy joke, an indecipherable non-sense, not worth the trouble of investigating. To his superior intelligence the total absurdity of life, the contingent nature of a world denuded of all values, are logical consequences of Descartes' Cogito ergo sum." Most famous amongst the works created by Duchamp in the New York period were his ready-mades, particularly the piece entitled "Fountain". During his time in New York he maintained
Cogito, ergo sum As a critic of Cartesian subjectivity, Heidegger sought to ground human subjectivity in death as that certainty which individualizes and authenticates our being. As he wrote in 1927: "This certainty, that "I myself am in that I will die," is the basic certainty of Dasein itself. It is a genuine statement of Dasein, while "cogito sum" is only the semblance of such a statement. If such pointed formulations mean anything at all, then the appropriate statement pertaining to Dasein in its being would have to be "sum moribundus" [I am in dying], "moribundus" not as someone gravely ill or wounded,