Writing Cogito

Download or read book Writing Cogito written by Hassan Melehy and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 1997-09-25 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Combining literary theory and history with detailed textual analysis, Melehy examines a series of events at the outset of modernity involving both literature and philosophy. Through the work of Michel de Montaigne and Rene Descartes, Melehy considers the question of the foundation of the human subject, in the context of contemporary debates in literature and philosophy. Montaigne, through writing, examines the many possibilities of subjective experience, and finds that the subject takes shape in writing. Descartes comes to the subject in search of a principle to circumvent the uncertainty of language--"I think, therefore I am," the cogito. But Descartes, Melehy shows, must continually depend on literary devices, on the properties of language whose effects he is so eager to escape--also deploying the devices to disguise the fact that they permeate his work.