Cartesian Anus

[Replies From View]

Could somebody please explain the Cartesian Anus to me?

I think, therefore I have an anus.

What's he going on about?  I must have an anus because I am capable of thought?  How does that follow?

[Glebe]

An anus should just 'be'. It should not dwell on existential matters.

[KaraokeDragon]

It's related to all the advances in the study of evolution and digestion that were just emerging back then, when biologists first began terming the human stomach the "second brain". This was in the days when not just naturalists but intellectuals of all stripes would  delight in the crassness of affirming the anus as a symbol of man's unremarkable membership of the animal kingdom, to be no more revered in bodily form or spiritual significance than the baboon, honeybadger or common garden gimp - all of whom possess, and frequently display, anuses. Now, furnished as we are with the understanding of this historical context we might follow this rhetorical acclaimation of the stomach as a second brain down through the bowels to its logical conclusion: the anus.

True, a full and proper understanding of the sentience of most beasts on earth as yet eludes our comprehension and we can no more ascribe to them in their masses a clarity of thought than we can deny the existence of their pink and puckered anuses, but in declaring the existence of his own anus Descartes was nailing his colours to the mast as a philosopher of the anatist school who thus ascribed human sentience as conditional upon and not merely circumstantial to possessing an anus.

This is what was meant by "Cogito ergo bum".