Re: Query: Boku desu sentence meaning.

On Tue, 13 Nov 2007 11:38:52 GMT, Paul Blay wrote:

Nigel Greenwood wrote:
As a matter of interest, what's the standard translation in Japanese
of "I think, therefore I am"?

我思うゆえに我あり


Or コーギトー・エルゴー・スム (ko-gito erugo- sumu: Cogito Ergo Sum). Interestingly, if
you look up the Japanese 我思う、故に我あり in the Kojien, it explains it with the
katakana as follows:

我思う、故に我あり
〔哲〕デカルトの言葉「コギトーエルゴースム(cogito, ergo sumﾗﾃﾝ）」の訳語。

A purist, though, would take issue with the Kojien. Descartes originally
wrote the expression in French and not in Latin, "Je pense, donc je suis"
as you can see in la quatrième partie at this site:

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/13846/13846-h/13846-h.htm

Moreover, in "Meditations on First Philosophy" which Descartes wrote in
Latin, he deliberately avoids the use of the phrase, "Ego cogito, ergo sum"
in arriving at the first certainty, revising the reasoning he used in the
earlier "Discourse on Method."
--
Phil
.

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