This made plenty of sense to me. Until I read the following in Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil:
There are still harmless self-observers who believe in the existence of “immediate certainties,” such as “I think,” or the “I will” that was Schopenhauer’s superstition: just as if knowledge had been given an object here to seize, stark naked, as a “thing-in-itself,” and no falsification took place from either the side of the subject or the side of the object.[...] For once and for all, we should free ourselves from the seduction of words! Let the people believe that knowing means knowing to the very end; the philosopher has to say: “When I dissect the process expressed in the proposition ‘I think,’ I get a whole set of bold claims that are difficult, perhaps impossible, to establish, – for instance, that I am the one who is thinking, that there must be something that is thinking in the first place, that thinking is an activity and the effect of a being who is considered the cause, that there is an ‘I,’ and finally, that it has already been determined what is meant by thinking, – that I know what thinking is. Because if I had not already made up my mind what thinking is, how could I tell whether what had just happened was not perhaps ‘willing’ or ‘feeling’? Enough: this ‘I think’ presupposes that I compare my present state with other states that I have seen in myself, in order to determine what it is: and because of this retrospective comparison with other types of ‘knowing,’ this present state has absolutely no ‘immediate certainty’ for me.” – In place of that “immediate certainty” which may, in this case, win the faith of the people, the philosopher gets handed a whole assortment of metaphysical questions, genuinely probing intellectual questions of conscience, such as: “Where do I get the concept of thinking from? Why do I believe in causes and effects? What gives me the right to speak about an I, and, for that matter, about an I as cause, and, finally, about an I as the cause of thoughts?”
A brief comment:
After reading this over and over again, I think I understand Nietzsche's criticism of Rene's take on the existence of one's own self. He raises valid (I say valid because I am convinced by the points Nietzsche raises) points such such as for a thought to manifest, a person must exist. So basically, Nietzsche, with his theory, goes deeper than Descartes, who doesn't give as much importance (here) to the body as he does to the mind. Also, Descartes makes a lot of assumptions about "I" and "thinking": both of which are eventually unsuccessful in proving one's existence. Nietzsche lays the foundations for his philosophy based on the existence of humanity. In short, one can revise Descartes quote to form this: "I am, therefore I exist."
P.S - Later on, Descartes himself changed the quote to "I am, I exist"
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Either I am very close to the correct meaning of what Nietzsche has to say about Rene's views here, or I am completely off the mark with the points made in Beyond Good and Evil. Understanding Nietzsche has been torturous even for the most learned scholars out there, so I am trying to be on my toes as much as possible, without getting ahead of myself. But having sincerely committed to reading and understanding Nietzsche's teachings, there is no looking back now.
**Readers, if you feel that I have misunderstood certain points, or that if you feel that you happen to have a better understanding of the topic, please feel free to drop a comment here, or shoot me an e-mail at nishath123@gmail.com. **
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