You may have noticed that we have glossed over the cogito. Once you have defined phenomena, I find that the cogito is easy to understand. Phenomena has to happen to something in order to exist, and that something cannot itself be phenomena. As we have said, we cannot deny phenomena. We may wonder about its value, but it does exist. It is there. And it has to happen to something, which therefor has to exist. The thing to which phenomena happen, that is us.

Phenomena and myself: I am, of course, a phenomenon to myself. But I am not just a phenomenon to myself. The relationship that I have with myself is different from the relationship I have with phenomena, because I cannot just be something that is manifesting itself to myself. The fact that I cannot define phenomenon without a reference to a self is proof that the self cannot be a phenomenon.

Hence there is not only phenomena. Hence there is not only relationship with phenomena. And now comes the scary question: is there anything else than myself? And, if there is anything else in the same category as myself, does it manifest to me through phenomena, just as myself is in part manifested to me through phenomena?

The category in which myself is, and in which I am not sure I can put anything else, will be called « things in themselves » as they are the things that have existence outside of their relationship with myself.

Phenomena and things in themselves: that is the true Cartesian question. Is there a thing in itself behind every phenomenon? Are phenomena the way things in themselves appear to us? Can we know and learn about things in themselves through the study of phenomena?