what is made secure. That which is, is no longer that which presences; it is rather that which, in representing, is first set over against, that which stands fixedly over against, which has the character of object [das Gegen-ständige]. Representing is making-stand-over-against, an objectifying that goes forward and masters.34 In this way representing drives everything together into the unity of that which is thus given the character of object. Representing is coagitalio.
Every relation to something-willing, taking a point of view, being sensible of [something]-is already representing; it is cogitans, which we translate as "thinking:' Therefore Descartes can cover all the modes of voluntas and of affectus, all actiones and passiones, with a designation that is at first surprising; cogitatio. In the ego cogito sum, the cogitare is understood in this essential and new sense. The subiectum, the fundamental certainty, is the being-represented-together-with-made secure at any time--of representing man together with the entity represented, whether something human or non-human, i.e., together with the objective. The fundamental certainty is the me cogitare = me esse that is at any time indubitably representable and represented. This is the fundamental equation of an reckoning belonging to the representing that is itself making itself secure. In this fundamental certainty man is sure that, as the representer of all representing,35 and therewith as the realm of all representedness, and hence of all certainty and truth, he is made safe and secure, i.e., is. Only because in the fundamental certainty (in the fundamentum absolutum inconcussum of the me cogitare = me esse), man is, in this way; necessarily represented-together-with; only because man who frees himself to himself belongs necessarily within the subiectum of this freedom—only for this reason can and must this man himself be transformed into an exceptional being, into a subject which, with regard to that which truly (i.e., certainly) is, which is primary,36 has preeminence among all subiecta. That in the fundamental equation of certainty, and then again in the actual subiectum, the ego is named does not mean that man is now being defined in terms of the I
34. Das Vor-stellen ist vor-gehende, meisternde Ver-gegen-ständlichung.
35. literally, "as the one who sets-before all setting-before."
36. das erste wahrhaft (d.h. gewiss) Seiende.