Thought's Ego in Augustine and Descartes

Download or read book Thought's Ego in Augustine and Descartes written by Gareth B. Matthews and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 1992 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In his concise and ambitious book, Gareth B. Matthews explores the implications of doing philosophy in the first person. He focuses on the most notable attempts in the history of philosophy to take this perspective: Augustine's Confessions, perhaps the first significant autobiography in Western culture, and Soliloquies, a dialogue between himself and reason; and Descartes's Meditations and Discourse on Method. "By examining the first-personalization of philosophy in these two historical figures," he writes, "we can learn something important about our own philosophical options, and about those of any other thinker who dares, philosophically, to say 'I.'"