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[[Lacan]]'s works abound in references to the famous phrase by [[Descartes]], ''cogito ergo sum'' ("I think, therefore I am").<ref>1637: 54</ref>
This phrase (which [[Lacan]] often refers to simply as 'the ''[[cogito]]''') comes to stand, in [[Lacan]]'s work, for [[Descartes]]'s entire [[philosophy]].
1. On one level, the ''[[cogito]]'' comes to stand for the modern western concept of the [[Ego]], based as it is on the notions of the self-sufficiency and self-[[transparency]] of [[consciousness]], and the [[autonomy]] of the [[ego]].<ref>{{E}} p.6</ref>
Although [[Lacan]] does not believe that the modern western concept of the [[ego]] was invented by [[Descartes]] or by any other [[individual]], he argues that it was born in the same era in which [[Descartes]] was writing (the mid-sixteenth to the early seventeenth century), and is particularly clearly expressed by [[Descartes]].<ref>{{See S2, }} p.6-7</ref>
Thus, although this concept of the [[ego]] seems so natural and eternal to western man today, it is in fact a relatively recent cultural construct; its eternal-natural appearance is in fact an [[illusion]] produced by retroaction.<ref>{{S2}} p.4-5</ref>
