There’s a difference between saying “I breathe” and saying “I am breathing.”
One is a label. A fact pinned to a board.
The other is a pulse in motion — a truth that lives only in the moment it is spoken.
That difference, small as it seems, is the same difference that has troubled me for years about the famous phrase: Cogito Ergo Sum.
The First Breath
In 1637, René Descartes published his Discourse on the Method (Discours de la méthode).
There, he first wrote the phrase in French:
“Je pense, donc je suis.”
The simplest and most faithful rendering is:
“I am thinking, therefore I am.”
It is present, active, unfolding. A thought not as possession, but as pulse.
Four Years Later
In 1641, Descartes published Meditations on First Philosophy (Meditationes de prima philosophia).
There, he gave the phrase again — this time in Latin:
“Cogito, ergo sum.”
The Latin still carries present tense, but when it crossed into English, it usually became the flatter:
“I think, therefore I am.”
Static. Declarative. A noun pinned in place.
And that version stuck.
Why the Shift?
The choice of language was no accident.
- In 1637, Descartes wrote in French to open philosophy to a wider audience beyond scholars and clergy. His living phrase was offered to everyday readers.
- In 1641, he turned to Latin to speak directly to the university and theological establishment across Europe. Latin was the tongue of authority, precision, and debate. His phrase was dressed for the academy.
And it was that academic version that translators carried forward.
The lively vernacular gave way to the marble of scholastic formality.
Descartes Speaks Again (1647)
The story doesn’t end there.
In 1647, Descartes oversaw the French translation of his Principles of Philosophy (Principes de la philosophie).
And when he came to the famous phrase, he did not flatten it.
Once again, he wrote:
“Je pense, donc je suis.”
Just as he had in 1637.
Even after writing Cogito, ergo sum in Latin, when Descartes himself returned to French, he kept the phrase alive, present, unfolding: I am thinking, therefore I am.
This tells us something vital: the static English form was not his intent. The living pulse was.
The Tombstone in English
The marble version — I think, therefore I am — entered English in 1649, in the first translation of the Discourse on the Method. And it was the Victorians, two centuries later, who canonized it.
By then, Queen Victoria’s endless mourning for Prince Albert had draped English society in solemnity. Mourning became fashion, marble became dignity, and restraint became virtue. In such an age, it was no surprise that the frozen version of Descartes’ phrase fit so neatly.
It wasn’t just translated. It was embalmed.
Why It Matters
The difference is not academic.
- I think makes existence into a noun — a possession.
- I am thinking makes existence into a verb — a process.
And that small shift has enormous weight.
One teaches us to see identity as something to hold.
The other teaches us to see identity as something we are always becoming.
What About Other Tongues?
In French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese — even in German — the phrase still carries the living present. I am thinking is naturally implied.
It is mainly English (and sometimes Dutch) that freezes it into marble. Which means: the ossification of Descartes is not universal. It is an English inheritance.
The Wider Question
If this phrase, so central to modern thought, was handed down mistranslated — whether by laziness, by choice, or by habit — then what else has been?
How many truths have we inherited embalmed instead of alive?
How many words, scriptures, chants, and mantras have been handed to us in marble when they were first sung as breath?
Invitation
I’ve carried this rub since the first time I heard the phrase. Maybe what troubled me all along wasn’t Descartes, but the echo of mistranslation. Maybe I was always hearing the living phrase beneath the dead one.
I am thinking, therefore I am.
And I wonder — how many bilingual voices, moving between English and French or Spanish or German, have felt the same unease? How many students, even graduates, have read Descartes in English, then in another tongue, and never stopped to notice the vast difference in pulse?
That is the quiet power of mistranslation: it can slip by unquestioned, shaping culture for centuries, even when the living source was always close at hand.
What shifts in you if you let the active, unfolding phrase be your inheritance instead?
💬 I’d love to hear your reflections. The comments here on the blog are the hearth for this conversation. And if you’d like to hear this reflection spoken — with the pauses, the breath, and the weight of silence — I shared it as a podcast as well. Each stands alone, but together they lean into each other.
