The first pages of Al-Ghazzali’s “The Rescuer from Error” and Descarte’s “Discourse on Method”. Because Arabic books open in the opposite direction, the page is, as shown, the left-hand page; whereas Descartes’ is also, as shown, the right-hand page. Note also that The Rescuer from Error was handwritten.
It’s almost a bit of a joke in Middle Eastern Studies that Descartes stole ‘I think, therefore I am’ from Abu Hamid al-Ghazzali. The argument is convincing, though al-Ghazzali would have to step into the longer line of people Descartes could have stolen it from, most likely of whom, as Professor Christia Mercer in Columbia’s Philosophy Department (who I took Art Hum with!) argues, is Teresa de Ávila. I should admit my bias, which is that if Descartes did steal from al-Ghazzali, I wish he would’ve done so better, because as it is he seems to have missed the most important point.
We have all heard that phrase I think, therefore I am. We know that this is supposed to be the kernel of total truth from which Descartes is able to escape from the depths of knowing nothing to the beginning of knowing something. I suspect nobody knows the line after that, and to be honest, I still don’t. Descartes does not have much difficulty proving the self’s existence, but encounters a much more formidable problem when it comes time to move from the internal to the external world — the world of other people, other things, other ideas.
