Aporia vol. 25 no.

2—2015

Sum, Ergo Cogito:

Nietzsche Re-orders Descartes

Jonas Monte

I. Introduction

N
ietzsche’s aphorism 276 in The Gay Science addresses
Descartes’ epistemological scheme: “I still live, I still think:
I still have to live, for I still have to think. Sum, ergo cogito:
cogito, ergo sum” (GS 223). Ironically, Nietzsche inverts the logic in
Descartes’ famous statement “Cogito, ergo sum” as a caustic way, yet
poetic and stylish, of creating his own statement.1 He then delivers
his critique by putting his own version prior to that of Descartes.
Here, Nietzsche’s critique can be interpreted as a twofold overlap-
ping argument.
First, by reversing Descartes’ axiom into “Sum, ergo cogito,”
Nietzsche stresses that in fact a social ontology (which includes
metaphysical, logical, linguistic, and conceptual elements) has been
a condition that makes possible Descartes’ inference of human
existence from such pre-established values. Here, Descartes seems
not to have applied his methodical doubt completely, since to arrive

1 In light of Nietzsche’s inversion, this paper seeks to analyse Descartes’ Meditation Project, in
effect, the cogito as a device in itself. It does not consider the project’s metaphysical background,
including the issue of Descartes’ substance dualism. For an introduction to Cartesian dualism,
see Justin Skirry, “René Descartes: The Mind-Body Distinction,” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Jonas Monte is a senior currently studying in a joint honors program in philosophy and
political science at the University of Ottawa, Canada. His primary philosophical
interests are ethics, political philosophy, Nietzsche, and early modern philosophy.
After graduation, Jonas plans to pursue a PhD in philosophy.
14 Jonas Monte

at his axiom he has excluded some pre-existing factors from being

put in doubt. For Nietzsche, this leads to a critique of Descartes’ two
basic points of departure in his Meditation Project: setting reason
against doubt in order to reach certainty, and the idea of conscious-
ness as the condition of one’s existence.
Secondly, by asserting “Sum, ergo cogito: cogito, ergo sum,”
Nietzsche seems to set forth this first point as a principle against
which Descartes’ cogito, ergo sum is a possible dictum for humans
only as a superficial creation. In other words, Descartes’ statement is
only possible because of his a priori concept of thinking (cogito) that
already is derived from a concept of existence (sum), both of which
amount to social constructions. Moreover, both have validity only in
the world of logic and language. Thus, Descartes does not call into
doubt the conceptualization of thinking, existence, consciousness,
and so on.
Still, Nietzsche takes issue with Descartes’ cogito not only
because its metaphysical underpinnings are needed to derive the
certainty of human existence, but also due to its conception of a
subject whose thinking seems to be disassociated from the Will to
Power, and not a consequence of it. In Nietzsche’s philosophy, “a
thought comes when ‘it’ wants, not when ‘I’ want; so that it is a
falsification of the facts to say: the subject ‘I’ is the condition of the
predicate ‘think’” (BGE 47). Nevertheless, this critique does not
seem to address the conclusion of Descartes’ reasoning. Indeed,
even assuming that Nietzsche’s critique is well founded, it is still
the case that one is thinking, and therefore one exists. Thus, is the
cogito—taking it as isolated from Descartes’ metaphysics—immune
to Nietzsche’s critique? Was Nietzsche so misled by focusing on the
metaphysical aspects of Descartes’ Meditations that he ignored the
reasoning central to the cogito itself?
In light of these observations, this paper aims to assess
Nietzsche’s critique of Descartes’ “Cogito, ergo sum” in his books The
Gay Science and Beyond Good and Evil. I shall first analyse Nietzsche’s
objections to Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy focusing
on the notions of reason, consciousness, truth, and self. By doing
this, one can better appreciate Nietzsche’s inversion (Sum, ergo cogito)
as a pre-condition for Descartes’ “Cogito, ergo sum” recognizing that
there are prior assumptions underlying Descartes’ conception of
 Nietzsche Re-orders Descartes 15

the cogito. Afterwards, I shall evaluate Nietzsche’s objections, and I

conclude by discussing whether Descartes’ cogito eventually succumbs
to Nietzsche’s objections.

Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy

Influenced by Euclidian geometry and Sextus Empiricus’

skepticism, Descartes anticipates a Copernican revolution in phi-
losophy by relying on his method of doubt to achieve certainty. In
his First Meditation, Descartes asserts that his method requires the
need “to demolish everything completely and to start again right
from the foundations” (MFP 12), so that it seeks “to help ‘set aside’
preconceived opinions” (Newman 16). Descartes’ requirement that
“knowledge is to be based in complete, or perfect, certainty amounts
to requiring a complete absence of doubt—an indubitability.” (MFP 3)
In other words, in applying the methodology of doubt, Descartes’
Meditation Project aims to arrive at scientific certainty by rejecting
all opinions whose truth in any way may be open to question. This
hyperbolic doubt leads him to consider a range of hypothetical
problems.
First, Descartes proceeds to analyse empirical knowledge
gained by the senses. Based on Snell’s Law of Refraction (e.g., a lapis
immersed in a glass of water is perceived by human sight as if it
were broken), Descartes doubts the senses: “But from time to time I
have found that the senses deceive, and it is prudent never to trust
completely those who have deceived us even once” (12). Here, it is
clear just how radical is Descartes’ project, since once something
succumbs to hyperbolic doubt, it does not deserve complete trust.
Thus, he sets forth the principle that everything reported by the
senses under unfavorable conditions is doubtful, and therefore one
should consider it as false.
Nevertheless, Descartes seems to be flexible regarding his
doubting the senses. Although he assumes there are some conditions
in which the senses fail as mechanisms to provide absolute certainty,
in other situations the same senses can also establish certainty, as he
puts it: “I am here, sitting by the fire, wearing a winter dressing-gown,
16 Jonas Monte

holding this piece of paper in my hands, and soon. Again, how could
it be denied that these hands or this whole body are mine?” (13).
It is worthwhile recognizing that in the same passage, Descartes
excludes “madmen” contending that “such people are insane, and
I would be thought equally mad if I took anything from them as a
model for myself” (13). In other words, his experiment requires that
one must be aware of their direct experiences of the senses—as a
condition of not being deficient—in order to derive certainty. In this
case, the principle that knowledge gained under adverse conditions
of perception can be false succumbs to the proposition I am here
now doing such and such. Nevertheless, this leads to another difficulty,
which is known as the dream problem.
According to Descartes, the proposition I am here doing such and
such is also doubtful since it is possible one can be dreaming and yet
perceive that one is here (13). Although one can be aware of one’s
sensory experiences, there can be no consequent assurance that one
is not dreaming, since those same sensory experiences can occur in
a dream. However, Descartes will argue that there are some some
things that are not altered whether or not one is sleeping:
Arithmetic, geometry, and other subjects of this
kind, which deal only with the simplest and most
general things regardless of whether they really ex-
ist in nature or not, contain something certain and
indubitable. For whether I am awake or asleep, two
and three added together are five, and a square has
no more than four sides. It seems impossible that
such transparent truths should incur any suspicion
of being false. (14)
Significantly, although one’s ideas and perceptions can be a
dream that does not correspond to external factors but happens
totally within the mind, one still conceives of arithmetic and
geometry as true. Still, while the sciences of extension survive the
dream problem, they will succumb to the Evil Deceiver problem.
In this scenario, Descartes wrestles with the possibility that
there is an evil genius who makes one think that 2+4=6, when in
reality the total is 8 (14). How can one have certainty even of arith-
metic and geometry when one may be the victim of an evil God who
likes to deceive? Here, crucially, Descartes must address this problem
 Nietzsche Re-orders Descartes 17

by arguing for the existence of a perfect God (who otherwise would

not be God) to secure his cogito, an issue that, as was stated earlier,
extends beyond the scope of this paper.
According to Descartes, however, even if one is being deceived,
the fact that one can be aware of the capacity of thinking survives
the evil deceiver problem (17). Since Descartes considers a human
being to be a thinking entity, this requires that there be a subject
who is aware of such a characteristic, so that the subject’s existence
follows. As one can see, Descartes’ Meditations include as a necessary
condition the affirmation of the subject as self-aware; otherwise, it
would be not possible to conceive of the cogito. Hence, the cogito,
survives even the evil genius problem.
To summarize, Descartes’ Meditation Project includes a
number of key points: a self-determined subject; the search for truth;
full awareness during the meditation process in order to arrive at the
cogito; reason as innate. In fact, those points will be challenged by
Nietzsche’s critiques of metaphysics and the self-sufficient subject.
Moreover, Nietzsche will argue the flaws in deriving the cogito from
such assumptions, as will be discussed below.

Nietzsche’s Critique: Sum, ergo cogito

Nietzsche in Beyond Good and Evil contends that Descartes’

Cogito is possible only because it presupposes what “I” and “think”
are. He states:
When I analyse the event expressed in the sentence
‘I think’, I acquire a series of rash assertions which
are difficult, perhaps impossible, to prove—for
example, that it is I who think, that it has to be
something at all which thinks, that thinking is
an activity and operation on the part of an entity
thought as a cause, that “I” exists, finally that
what is designed by ‘thinking’ has already been
determined—that I know what thinking is. (46)
Here, Nietzsche criticizes Descartes’ concept of an “I” disassoci-
ated from “think” who can be self-determined. In other words, he
concludes that Descartes conceives of an “I” as the cause of thought,
an “I” in this case who is not a result of the Will to Power but a priori
18 Jonas Monte

to it. The Nietzschean “I”, on the other hand, is the manifestation of

various drives, which are “given” by the Will to Power in a body in
the state of constant becoming. Singularity comes only from the par-
ticular constitution of those drives, although they are the result of
constantly changing conflict among multiple forces. In this picture,
thinking and feeling are associated only with apparent manifestations
of those drives, as Nietzsche writes in Daybreak, “While ‘we’ believe
we are complaining about the vehemence of a drive, at bottom it
is one drive which is complaining about another (109). As a result,
unlike Descartes’ subject, Nietzsche’s “I” is determined by the Will
to Power and is not conceived of as a primary cause.
Furthermore, Descartes seems to take as a starting point the
notion of the “I” as self-determined, a concept that conflicts with
Nietzsche’s “ontology”. For Nietzsche, Will to Power—the conflicts
among multiple forces in the process of constant change—determines
everything, so that humans are in constant obedience to such
impulses. In fact, Nietzsche asserts that one cannot know what is
going on “under skin” (this conflict among multiple forces, Will
to Power in itself), although one can observe and interpret the
“skin” (have an appraisal of the manifestations of Will to Power).
This underlies Nietzsche’s concept of superficiality, which in his
philosophy is a positive notion. He states: “He who has seen deeply
into the world knows what wisdom there is in the fact that men are
superficial. It is their instinct for preservation which teaches them
to be fickle, light, and false” (BGE 84–85). With this concept of the
value of superficiality in mind, Nietzsche states in a key passage that
from the “herd” of post-Socratic philosophers, “One might have to
exclude Descartes, the father of rationalism (and consequently the
grandfather of the Revolution), who recognized only the authority
of reason: but reason is only an instrument, and Descartes was
superficial” (114). Here, Nietzsche appears to be complimenting
Descartes by excepting him from the philosophical-theological
mainstream and by approving his superficiality. Is this the case?
Writing on this subject, Mota Itaparica argues that Nietzsche
is indeed praising Descartes, while at the same time criticizing him.
Nietzsche considers that Descartes was superficial because “he
conceives of the idea in its superficiality—language—hiding the fact
that the logic rests on the belief in a universal and necessary truth,
 Nietzsche Re-orders Descartes 19

whose only foundation is the postulation of an extremely good God”

(Itaparica 76).2 Specifically, Descartes departs from the parapherna-
lia of social constructions (e.g., language, values, concepts which are
pre-established) to reflect only the externals of what is happening
“under skin” (Will to Power), where these usual human concepts
have no validity. Nietzsche is also critical of Descartes’ pre-established
values because of the moral content behind the reflection on the evil
genius (the implication that deceiving is bad) and their positing of
truth as a universal objectivity, since Nietzsche “does not criticize
false claims to truths but truth itself and as an ideal” (Deleuze 95). As
Nietzsche addressed an unnamed philosopher, but clearly intending
Descartes: “My dear sir … it is improbable you are not mistaken: but
why do you want the truth at all?” (BGE 46) Hence, Nietzsche’s more
positive view of Descartes’ project seems consider it as a search for
premises to support his Cogito, while recognizing that Descartes’
method of doubt was not indeed so radical and preferable to the
alternative.

Cogito, Ergo Sum: Descartes Defended?

According to Itaparica, Nietzsche’s critique of Descartes seems

to indicate he had misread Descartes’ cogito reasoning. Nietzsche
argues that the cogito is possible only if an array of assumptions is deter-
mined before the experiment. Indeed, it is clear in the Meditations
that during the whole process the subject must be aware, which is
Descartes’ reason for excluding the insane. He affirms clearly, “But
for all that I am a thing which is real and which truly exists. But what
kind of thing? As I have just said—a thinking thing” (MFP 18). In fact,
it is within these conditions that Descartes creates his reasoning; dif-
ferentiating the insane rests on whether or not one is aware of one’s
thinking.

2 Author’s translation; the original reads: “… por conceber o pensamento em sua superfície—a
linguagem—escondendo que a lógica repousa na crença em uma verdade universal e necessária,
cujo único fundamento é postulação de um Deus sumamente bom.” In contrast to the suggestion
of Moto Itaparica, this paper submits that in BGE, Sec. 191, Nietzsche uses the concept of superfi-
ciality in a denotative sense to criticize Descartes
20 Jonas Monte

In defense of Descartes, Peacocke attempts to clarify the issues

by explaining Descartes’ method. Peacocke’s reasoning goes as
follows. Descartes posits (1) a thinking thing, and (2) if the subject
is aware of their thinking, the conclusion is (3) that the subject
must exist (Peacocke 110). Relating Peacocke’s reconstruction of the
Cogito to Nietzsche’s approach, the issue is that Nietzsche goes only
from (2) to (3) , when, logically speaking, (1) answers his objection.
Accordingly, Nietzsche’s critique of the Cogito, ergo sum, abstract-
ing it from any of the Meditations’ underlying principles, seems not
entirely valid. Still, by isolating the logical character of the argument,
Peacocke provides only a limited defense of Descartes’ Cogito. Even
given his defense, he freely concedes that “it relies on principles of
metaphysics, in its treatment of conscious mental events and their
relations to subjects” (Peacocke 122).

“Cogito, ergo sum” or “Sum, ergo cogito” ?

Although “Cogito, ergo sum,” understood as (1)–(3) above, may

answer, at first glance, Nietzsche’s objection, it seems still to succumb
to his criticism of the “I” as cause and disassociated from the Will
to Power (or the naturalist world, if one prefers). By considering “to
think” as a consequence of one’s drives, Nietzsche does not accept
an “I” who is self-determined (a conscious Ego who commands
mental states), but an “It” that thinks. Consequently, the “I” is a
useful fiction that is secondary to the “It”, which is the manifesta-
tion of Will to Power. The former is possible only because of the
latter. Such an “I” is a simply one’s interpretation of one’s drives
which we disassociate—but should not—from the whole:
Moreover, if certainty is sought, being aware that one is thinking
requires a relationship with other subjects and objects. If Descartes’
thinking thing is possible, is it the case that if one were alone in this
world one would be aware that one is thinking?
There is some reason to think otherwise, since our minds need
references to be aware of something. An interesting illustration
occurs in an Alfred Hitchcock film, The Lady Vanishes. Although
the young girl was aware that she had talked to the Lady, she was
led to self-doubt because those around her tried to convince her
otherwise. While the girl did not, of course, doubt her very existence,
 Nietzsche Re-orders Descartes 21

her certainty, perhaps even her “consciousness”, was thrown into

question because she lacked outside reference points. It returned
only in seeing the Lady’s signature reappear in the frost on the train
window, an external object on which the girl could rely. The illus-
tration suggests a possibility that is the very opposite of Descartes’
approach: that there appears to be no such entity as “I” without an
external reference. Descartes conceives of the subject as self-deter-
mined, as a cause, and thus succumbs to Nietzsche’s critique. Hence,
Nietzsche’s “Sum, ergo cogito” proposes that the condition in which
it is possible to have what is called an “I” is only if there is a “we” or
an external world.
In fact, Nietzsche is taking issue with conceiving of a thinking
thing as having a faculty that can cause and command mental states.
This is because what delimits the whole being as a fictional Ego is
social construction (words, concepts, structured content), but this
fictional Ego remains only a “visible” conceptual expression of
the whole. As Katsafanas explains it: “Since Nietzsche claims that
conscious states, and only conscious states, have conceptually articu-
lated content, it follows that unconscious mental states do not have
conceptually articulated content; unconscious states must have a
type of nonconceptual content” (Katsafanas 3). In other words, it
is not the case that because one cannot conceptualize some uncon-
scious states, one cannot conclude that these states do not exist
or are subordinate to conscious states, nor is it the case that the
conscious states constitute an Ego apart from and commanding the
unconscious states. As a result, Descartes’ cogito represents just one
aspect of the self that can be grasped only with an already given
concept.
This not only evidences that Nietzsche had not misread
Descartes’ cogito reasoning but also explains his move from Peacocke’s
(2) to (3). A plausible interpretation may be that he understands the
Cogito as simply the superficiality of consciousness that does not
encompass the whole picture. Since in Nietzschean thought, “the
movement from an unconscious state to a conscious state is the
process of conceptualization” (Katsafanas 6), the cogito is de facto
conceptualized content. As Katsafanas describes the process, “an
unconscious perception becomes a conscious perception once the
perceptual content has been conceptualized”(6).
22 Jonas Monte

Hence, Nietzsche’s “Sum, ergo cogito” conveys the whole mental

status (unconscious and conscious states) highlighting that it is an a
priori conceptualization, which condition makes possible Descartes’
“Cogito, ergo sum” as a superficiality.

Final Considerations

For Nietzsche, Descartes’ cogito is merely a partial picture of one’s

mental status and has a certain validity as a reflection of the human
surface and a product of language (superficiality of consciousness)
but it otherwise does not work without Descartes’ pre-established
metaphysical values. In fact, from Nietzsche’s standpoint, it is quite
unconvincing to start from the Cartesian principle that the “I”,
existing as an entity, is a cause of thinking, since this seems to rest
on pre-conceived assumptions regarding both a self-defined subject
and that subject’s operations. More generally, Nietzsche observes
that Descartes’ Meditations is replete with metaphysics, something
Nietzsche vehemently criticizes.
Still, nothing disallows the possibility of analysing Descartes’
cogito by relying solely on its logical reasoning as a linguistic construct,
as Peacocke does. However, even then, Nietzsche’s critique of cogito
argument would still be relevant as it applies to Descartes’ concep-
tion of self. Here, the point is that Descartes’ “I” is, for Nietzsche,
merely a fictional Ego which expresses only conscious states (words,
concepts, structured content) and does not take into account
the unconscious ones. Moreover, in order to arrive at existence
Descartes effectively departs from social constructions (conscious
states, language, and concepts) without subjecting these concepts
to doubt. In that sense, Descartes does not go beyond the surface,
which provides reason for the negative side of Nietzsche’s appraisal of
him as superficial. In re-ordering Descartes, Nietzsche contends for
a being a priori (something going on under skin, unconscious states)
before considering the surface (conscious states, conceptualization,
social construction). Nietzsche, therefore, is correct in stating that
Descartes’ “Cogito, ergo sum” is only possible as a suffix. As Nietzsche
re-states it, “Sum, ergo cogito: cogito, ergo sum” (GS 223).
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