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[[Lacan]]'s works abound in references to the famous phrase by [[Descartes]], ''cogito ergo sum'' ("I [[think]], therefore I am"). This phrase (which [[Lacan]] often refers to simply as 'the ''[[cogito]]''') comes to stand, in [[Lacan]]'s [[work]], for [[Descartes]]'s entire [[philosophy]]. [[Lacan]]'s attitude to [[Cartesian]]ism is extremely [[complex]], and only a few of the most important points can be summarised here.

On one level, the ''[[cogito]]'' comes to stand for the modern western [[concept ]] of the [[ego]], based as it is on the notions of the [[autonomy|self-sufficiency]] and [[transparency|self-transparency]] of [[consciousness]], and the [[autonomy]] of the [[ego]].<ref>{{E}} p. 6</ref>

Although [[Lacan]] does not believe that the modern western concept of the [[ego]] was invented by [[Descartes]] or by any [[other ]] [[individual]], he argues that it was [[born ]] in the same era in which [[Descartes]] was [[writing ]] (the mid-sixteenth to the early seventeenth century), and is particularly clearly expressed by [[Descartes]].<ref>{{S2}} pp. 6-7</ref>

Thus, although this concept of the [[ego]] seems so [[nature|natural]] and [[time|eternal]] to western man today, it is in fact a relatively [[recent ]] [[culture|cultural construct]]; its [[time|eternal]]-[[nature|natural]] [[appearance ]] is in fact an [[illusion]] produced by [[punctuation|retroaction]].<ref>{{S2}} p. 4-5</ref>

[[Lacan]] argues that the [[experience ]] of [[psychoanalytic]] [[treatment]] is an experience that leads us to oppose any [[philosophy]] directly issuing from the ''[[Cogito]]''.<ref>{{E}} p. 1; {{S2}} p. 4</ref> [[Freud]]'s discovery of the [[unconscious]] subverts the [[Cartesian]] concept of [[subjectivity]] because it disputes the [[Cartesian]] equation [[subject]] = [[ego]] = [[consciousness]]. One of [[Lacan]]'s main criticisms of [[ego-psychology]] and [[object-relations theory]] is that these [[school]]s betrayed [[Freud]]'s discovery by returning to the [[Freud|pre-Freudian]] concept of the [[subject]] as an [[autonomous ego]].<ref>{{S2}} p. l1</ref>

On [[another ]] level, [[Lacan]]'s views can be seen not only as a [[subversion ]] of the ''[[cogito]]'', but also as an extension of it, for the ''[[cogito]]'' not only encapsulates the [[false ]] equation [[subject]] = [[ego]] = [[consciousness]] which [[Lacan]] opposes, but also focuses attention on the concept of the [[subject]], which [[Lacan]] wishes to retain.

This concept of [[subjectivity]] refers to what [[Lacan]] calls "the subject of [[science]]": a [[subject]] who is denied all intuitive access to [[knowledge]] and is thus [[left ]] with [[reason ]] as the only path to [[knowledge]].<ref>{{Ec}} p.831; {{Ec}} p. 858</ref>

[[Psychoanalysis]] can thus operate with a [[Cartesian]] method, advancing from [[doubt]] to [[certainty]], with the crucial [[difference ]] that it does not start from the [[statement]] "I think" but from the [[affirmation ]] "it thinks."<ref>{{S11}} p. 35-6</ref>