Renee Descartes also had a dream. But it had nothing to do with civil rights and equality and all the lofty goals we’ve come to associate with “having dreams” and discussing them in writing or speeches.

On November 10, 1619, the Frenchman, confined—due to chronic gout—to a dressing gown, had dreams that were to change modern philosophy forever.

What those dreams actually consisted of is no longer clear, but what they led to has been studied in libraries and universities, discussed in coffee shops and bedrooms and mused over while walking or driving since the 17th century.

Descartes’ dreams forced him to wonder whether waking life was not, perhaps a dream as well (anybody who’s seen The Matrix…sound familiar?). Those nocturnal journeys spawned his Meditations on First Philosophy, a work in six parts or “meditations” exploring questions behind our existences, that of God, our cognizance, perfection, the difference between the real and the perceived and the relationship between the mind and body (to Descartes, two separate entities).

Perhaps the most famous, if not most important, point to come from those meditations (and thus those dreams), was the phrase known as the “cogito” for Descartes’ “cogito ergo sum.” Realizing that much of his sensory reactions could lead him to false beliefs (e.g. the thought that a branch was bent because it appeared so in water) encouraged him to realize he must exist.

That is, possessing the ability to doubt made him a thinking being and thus a being (because, after all, something that questions cannot not be, right?): cogito ergo sum, “I think, therefore I am.”

There’s no way to know whether someone else would have come to these conclusions or not. Perhaps eventually that theoretical he or she would have. People have been plagued with existential doubts and questions and crises since they’ve been around (I guess that’s the whole point…), but no one could possibly have experienced the same thought process and the same dreams as Descartes did…not in the same exact manner and at the same time or day, November 10, 1619.

Tags: cartesian, cogito, descartes, dream, meditations on first philosophy, mind body problem, modern philosophy