Descartes' Thoughts On Personality

Descartes believed that a human being is a person and that man's personality, which is unique in the animal realm, is rooted in the "cognitive power," which is the source of his understanding, imagination, memory, and sensation. Descartes offers reasoning designed to justify his belief in the mind. The method of systematic doubt he is employing requires that he not assume anything that can be reasonably doubted and that he build his philosophy system only on ideas so clearly and distinctly understood as to be indubitable. He is determined "to reject as absolutely false everything as to which I could imagine the least ground of doubt, in order to see if afterwards there remained anything in my belief that was entirely certain." "But immediately afterwards I noticed that whilst I thus wished to think all things false, it was absolutely essential that the "I" who thought this should be somewhat and remarking that this truth "I think, therefore I am" was so certain and so assured that all the most extravaincapable of shaking it, I came to the conclusion that I could receive it without scruple as the first principle of the Philosophy for which I was seeking." The words, "I think, therefore I am," are the most celebrated words in the history of philosophy, and this passage is called the "cogito".

Next, Descartes answers the question "what am I". He says that because of the Aristotelian sense, he thinks he is "a reasonable animal," but he contends that this conception makes too many assumptions that cannot yet be justified. He then goes on an presents his idea of who he is, "I am not more than a thing which thinks, that is to say a mind, or a soul, or an understanding, or a reason…. I am, however, a real thing and really exist; but what thing? I have answered: a thing which thinks."

So, human personality, for Descartes, is rooted in the mind or rational soul, which is a spiritual substance. It is distinct from but related to the body. Its essential attribute is thought, in a broad sense of that term, and its association with the body is primarily in the pineal gland of the brain. The mind has a cognitive faculty of understanding, which is oriented towards knowledge, a volitional faculty of will, which is oriented towards free choice, and an affective dimension oriented towards feelings or emotions.