the attribute "thinking" is assigned to him as a distinguishing property . But with this conception of the principle we would be forgetting that the sum is defined as ego cogito. We would be forgetting that res cogitans, in keeping with the concept of cogitatio, would at the same time mean res cogitata: what represents itself. We would be forgetting that such self-representing co-constitutes the Being of the res cogitans. Again, Descartes himself offers a superficial and inadequate interpretation of res cogitans, inasmuch as he speaks the language of the doctrines of medieval scholasticism, dividing being as a whole into substantia infinita and substantia finita. Substantia is the conventional and predominant name for hypokeimenon, subiectum in a metaphysical sense. Substantia infinita is God, summum ens, creator. The realm of substantia finita is ens creatum. Descartes divides the latter into res cogitantes and res extensae. Thus all being is seen from the point of view of creator and creatum, and the new delineation of man through the cogito sum is, as it were, simply sketched into the old framework.
Here we have the most palpable example of earlier metaphysics impeding a new beginning for metaphysical thought. A historiological report on the meaning and nature of Descartes' doctrine is forced to establish such results. A historical meditation on the inquiry proper, however, must strive to think Descartes' principles and concepts in the sense he himself wanted them to have, even if in so doing it should prove necessary to translate his assertions into a different "language. " Thus sum res cogitans does not mean "I am a thing that is outfitted with the quality of thinking, " but, rather, "I am a being whose mode to be consists in representing in such a way that the representing co-presents the one who is representing into representedness." The Being of that being which I am myself, and which each man as himself is, . has its essence in representedness and in the certitude that adheres to it. But this does not mean that I am a "mere representation , " a mere thought, and nothing truly actual; it means that the permanence of my self as res cogitans consists in the secure establishment of representation, in the certitude according to which the self is brought before itself. But because the ego cogito, the "I represent," is not meant as a particular process in an isolated "I," because the "I" is understood as