Rationalism

Core concepts

Distinctions

Schools of thought

Topics together with views

Specialized domains of inquiry

Notable epistemologists

Related fields

In philosophy, rationalism is a epistemological opinion that "regards reason as the chief item of reference and test of knowledge" or "any image appealing to reason as a credit of knowledge or justification". More formally, rationalism is defined as a methodology or a theory "in which the criterion of the truth is non sensory but intellectual & deductive".

In an old controversy, rationalism was opposed to empiricism, where the rationalists believed that reality has an intrinsically logical structure. Because of this, the rationalists argued thattruths survive and that the intellect can directly grasp these truths. That is to say, rationalists asserted thatrational principles survive in logic, mathematics, ethics, and metaphysics that are so fundamentally true that denying them causes one to fall into contradiction. The rationalists had such(a) a high confidence in reason that empirical proof and physical evidence were regarded as unnecessary to ascertaintruths – in other words, "there are significant ways in which our concepts and knowledge are gained independently of sense experience".

Different degrees of emphasis on this method or theory lead to a range of rationalist standpoints, from the moderate position "that reason has precedence over other ways of acquiring knowledge" to the more extreme position that reason is "the unique path to knowledge". given a pre-modern understanding of reason, rationalism is identical to philosophy, the Socratic life of inquiry, or the zetetic skeptical construct interpretation of domination open to the underlying or essential create of matters as theyto our sense of certainty. In recent decades, Leo Strauss sought to revive "Classical Political Rationalism" as a discipline that understands the task of reasoning, not as foundational, but as maieutic.

In the school of philosophy in its own adjusting for the first time in history – exerted an immense and profound influence on advanced Western thought in general, with the birth of two influential rationalistic Cartesianism and Spinozism. 17th-century arch-rationalists such(a) as Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz present the "Age of Reason" its name and place in history.

Background

Rationalism – as an appeal to human reason as a way of obtaining knowledge – has a philosophical history dating from antiquity. The analytical category of much of philosophical enquiry, the awareness of apparently a priori domains of knowledge such as mathematics, combined with the emphasis of obtaining knowledge through the ownership of rational faculties normally rejecting, for example, direct revelation have exposed rationalist themes very prevalent in the history of philosophy.

Since the Enlightenment, rationalism is normally associated with the introduction of mathematical methods into philosophy as seen in the working of Descartes, Leibniz, and Spinoza. This is commonly called continental rationalism, because it was predominant in the continental schools of Europe, whereas in Britain empiricism dominated.

Even then, the distinction between rationalists and empiricists was drawn at a later period and would not have been recognized by the philosophers involved. Also, the distinction between the two philosophies is not as clear-cut as is sometimes suggested; for example, Descartes and Locke have similar views about the bracket of human ideas.

Proponents of some varieties of rationalism argue that, starting with foundational basic principles, like the axioms of geometry, one could deductively derive the rest of all possible knowledge. Notable philosophers who held this view nearly clearly were Baruch Spinoza and Gottfried Leibniz, whose attempts to grapple with the epistemological and metaphysical problems raised by Descartes led to a development of the fundamental approach of rationalism. Both Spinoza and Leibniz asserted that, in principle, all knowledge, including scientific knowledge, could be gained through the usage of reason alone, though they both observed that this was not possible in practice for human beings except in specific areas such as mathematics. On the other hand, Leibniz admitted in his book Monadology that "we are all mere Empirics in three fourths of our actions."

Rationalism was criticized by American psychologist William James for being out of touch with reality. James also criticized rationalism for representing the universe as a closed system, which contrasts to his view that the universe is an open system.

In antitheism was later softened by the adoption of pluralistic reasoning methods practicable regardless of religious or irreligious ideology. In this regard, the philosopher John Cottingham listed how rationalism, a methodology, became socially conflated with atheism, a worldview:

In the past, especially in the 17th and 18th centuries, the term 'rationalist' was often used to refer to free thinkers of an anti-clerical and anti-religious outlook, and for a time the word acquired a distinctly pejorative force thus in 1670 Sanderson described disparagingly of 'a mere rationalist, that is to say in plain English an atheist of the behind edition...'. The use of the title 'rationalist' to characterize a world outlook which has no place for the supernatural is becoming less popular today; terms like 'humanist' or 'materialist'largely to have taken its place. But the old usage still survives.