Cogito ergo Sum and the Japanese

This is a funny story from a friend via e-mail. I'm sharing it with you. It's fun to read human can be philosophically funny. Whatever that means.

This is about a discussion I was having in Japan (after hours in a bar) with Koyo Seiko's international staff that at the time included the son of the French Ambassador to Japan who had just earned his MBA from Tokyo University and was a trainee at Koyo (a Toyota subsidiary that makes bearings). We were a group of around ten and all were Japanese except him and me. Everyone could speak English so there were no communication problems.

"How do you like it here?" I asked. "What is it like working for a Japanese company inside Japan". He replied with surprising forcefulness: "I hate it. I cannot communicate on the same level with these people. They just do not know how to think". The other Koyo Seiko employees laughed nervously at his outburst, leading me to believe this had been subject of previous discussions. "Why?" I asked. "Give me an example". So he did.

“They can't understand Descartes. They can understand very well his mathematics and geometry concepts. But his philosophy is just beyond every one of them. For example, they cannot understand "Cogito ergo sum" even if their lives were to depend on it. They think it is so funny.” I started to chuckle. "Yeah" he said to me. “You are oriental but you are western educated so you don't have a problem with cogito ergo sum, right.”

I told the poor chap that he may as well have been living in another universe. "Of course they can't understand a stupid need we have in the west to prove our existence which is what Descartes the Skeptic was trying to do with "I think therefore I am". Look kid, you need to see it from their Japanese viewpoint. They exist and they know they exist and they feel no need to prove to themselves that they exist. And they find your need to prove your existence hilarious. And really it is extraordinarily funny if you think about it in more depth. At that point the Japanese group was rolling on the floor laughing at that conversation.”

He thought about it for a while then he too began to laugh. Cogito ergo sum is truly that funny.