In this paper, I have proposed a way of interpreting the philosophical subject of the Discours de la méthode that has remained relatively unexplored by contemporary commentators. By investigating the subjectivity that is expressed through Descartes? use of architectural metaphors, I laid bare some of the difficulties inherent in its discursive structure, as well as suggesting that the cogito in fact repeats and inscribes itself into this structure. In this context, the metaphor of the road (or travel) takes a supplementary role in relation to the architectural metaphor, marking the very conditions of existence of the architectonic subject. The subject, in order that it may establish itself as ?pure? and ?independent? thought, is dependent on a certain ?forgetfullness?; that is, only by forgetting its constitutive dependence on the diversity and historicity that is signified by the metaphor of travel, can it establish itself as its own source.

This essay is a comparative analysis with focus on Jean-Paul Sartre´s existentialism and Ferdinand Alquié´s cartesianism. They both represented the French philosophy of conscience in the early and mid 1900s. Because of that, they had similar ideas concerning the human conscience and freedom of the mind. But how did they come to those conclusions? And in which cases did they differ from one and other?.