Everything about Rationalism totally explained
In
epistemology and in its broadest sense,
rationalism is "any view appealing to
reason as a source of knowledge or justification" (Lacey 286). In more technical terms it's a method or a
theory "in which the criterion of the truth isn't sensory but intellectual and
deductive" (Bourke 263). 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 radical position that reason is "the unique path to knowledge" (Audi 771).
Background
Within the
Western philosophical tradition, " begins with the
Eleatics,
Pythagoreans, and
Plato, whose theory of the self-sufficiency of reason became the
leitmotif of
Neoplatonism and
idealism" (Runes 263). Since
the Enlightenment, rationalism is usually associated with the introduction of mathematical methods into philosophy, as in
Descartes,
Leibniz, and
Spinoza (Bourke 263). This is commonly called
continental rationalism, because it was predominant in the continental schools of Europe, whereas in Britain
empiricism dominated.
Rationalism is often contrasted with
empiricism. Taken very broadly these views are not mutually exclusive, since a philosopher can be both rationalist and empiricist (Lacey 286–287). Taken to extremes the empiricist view holds that all ideas come to us through experience, either through the five external senses or through such inner sensations as pain and pleasure, and thus that knowledge is essentially based on or derived from experience. At issue is the fundamental source of human knowledge, and the proper techniques for verifying what we think we know (see
Epistemology).
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. The philosophers who held this view most 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 use of reason alone, though they both observed that this wasn't possible
in practice for human beings except in specific areas such as
mathematics. On the other hand, Leibniz admitted that "we are all mere
Empirics in three fourths of our actions" (
Monadology § 28, cited in Audi 772).
Philosophical usage
The distinction between rationalists and empiricists was drawn at a later period, and wouldn't have been recognized by the philosophers involved. Also, the distinction wasn't as clear-cut as is sometimes suggested; for example, the three main rationalists were all committed to the importance of empirical science, and in many respects the empiricists were closer to Descartes in their methods and metaphysical theories than were Spinoza and Leibniz.
Background
Within the
Western philosophical tradition, " begins with the
Eleatics,
Pythagoreans, and
Plato, whose theory of the self-sufficiency of reason became the
leitmotif of
Neoplatonism and
idealism" (Runes 263). Since
the Enlightenment, rationalism is usually associated with the introduction of mathematical methods into philosophy, as in
Descartes,
Leibniz, and
Spinoza (Bourke 263). This is commonly called
continental rationalism, because it was predominant in the continental schools of Europe, whereas in Britain
empiricism dominated.
Rationalism is often contrasted with
empiricism. Taken very broadly these views are not mutually exclusive, since a philosopher can be both rationalist and empiricist (Lacey 286–287). Taken to extremes the empiricist view holds that all ideas come to us through experience, either through the five external senses or through such inner sensations as pain and pleasure, and thus that knowledge is essentially based on or derived from experience. At issue is the fundamental source of human knowledge, and the proper techniques for verifying what we think we know (see
Epistemology).
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. The philosophers who held this view most 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 use of reason alone, though they both observed that this wasn't possible
in practice for human beings except in specific areas such as
mathematics. On the other hand, Leibniz admitted that "we are all mere
Empirics in three fourths of our actions" (
Monadology § 28, cited in Audi 772).
History of rationalism
Classical Greek rationalists
Socrates (ca 470–399B.C.)
Socrates firmly believed that, before anyone can understand the world, they first need to understand themselves. And the only way to accomplish that's with rational thought. In order to understand what this means, one needs first to appreciate the Greek understanding of the world. Man is composed of two parts, a body and a soul. The soul itself has two principal parts, an Irrational part, which is the emotions and desires, and a Rational part, which is our true self. In our everyday experience, the irrational soul is drawn down into the physical body by its desires and merged with it, so that our perception of the world is limited to that delivered by the physical senses. The rational soul is beyond our conscious knowledge, but sometimes communicates via images, dreams, and other means. The task of the philosopher is to refine and eventually extract the irrational soul from its bondage, hence the need for moral development, and then to connect with the rational soul, and so become a complete person, manifesting the higher spiritual essence of the person whilst in the physical. True rationalism is therefore not simply an intellectual process, but a shift in perception and a shift in the qualitative nature of the person. The rational soul perceives the world in a spiritual manner - it sees the Platonic Forms - the essence of what things are. To know the world in this way requires that one first know oneself as a soul, hence the requirement to 'know thyself', for example to know who you truly are.
Socrates didn't publish or write any of his thoughts, but he was constantly in discussion with others. He would usually start by asking a rhetorical (seemingly answerable) question, to which the other would give an answer. Socrates would then continue to ask questions until all conflicts were resolved, or until the other could do nothing else but admit to not knowing the answer (which was what most of his discussions ended with). Socrates didn't claim to know the answers, but that didn't take away the ability to critically and rationally approach problems. His goal was to show that ultimately our intellectual approach to the world is flawed, and we need to transcend this in order to obtain a true knowledge of what things are.
Neoplatonism
Neoplatonism (also Neo-Platonism) is the modern term for a school of philosophy that took shape in the 3rd century AD, founded by the
Egyptian philosopher
Plotinus and based on the teachings of
Plato and earlier
Platonists. Neoplatonists considered themselves simply "Platonists", and the modern distinction is due to the perception that their philosophy contained enough unique interpretations of Plato to make it substantively different from what Plato wrote and believed.
Neoplatonism took definitive shape with the philosopher
Plotinus, who claimed to have received his teachings from
Ammonius Saccas, a dock worker and philosopher in Alexandria. Plotinus was also influenced by Alexander of Aphrodisias and Numenius. Plotinus's student Porphyry assembled his teachings into the six Enneads.
Subsequent Neoplatonic philosophers included Hypatia of Alexandria, Iamblichus, Proclus, Hierocles of Alexandria, Simplicius of Cilicia, and Damascius, who wrote On First Principles. Born in Damascus, he was the last teacher of Neoplatonism at Athens. Neoplatonism strongly influenced Christian thinkers (such as Augustine, Boethius, Pseudo-Dionysius, John Scotus Eriugena, and Bonaventura). Neoplatonism was also present in medieval Islamic and Jewish thinkers such as al-Farabi and Maimonides, and experienced a revival in the Renaissance with the acquisition and translation of Greek and Arabic Neoplatonic texts.
René Descartes (1596–1650)
Descartes thought that only knowledge of eternal truths – including the truths of mathematics, and the epistemological and metaphysical foundations of the sciences – could be attained by reason alone; other knowledge, the knowledge of physics, required experience of the world, aided by the
scientific method. He also argued that although dreams appear as real as sense experience, these dreams can't provide persons with knowledge. Also, since conscious sense experience can be the cause of illusions, then sense experience itself can be doubtable. As a result, Descartes deduced that a rational pursuit of truth should doubt every belief about reality. He elaborated these beliefs in such works as
Discourse on Method,
Meditations on First Philosophy, and
Principles of Philosophy. Descartes developed a method to attain truths according to which nothing which can't be recognised by the intellect (or
reason) can be classified as knowledge. These truths are gained "without any sensory experience", according to Descartes. Truths that are attained by reason are to be broken down into elements which intuition can grasp, which, through a purely deductive process, will result in clear truths about reality.
Descartes therefore argued, as a result of his method, that reason alone determined knowledge, and that this could be done independently of the senses. For instance, his famous dictum,
cogito ergo sum, is a conclusion reached
a priori and not through an inference from experience. This was, for Descartes, an irrefutable principle upon which to ground all forms of other knowledge. Descartes posited a metaphysical
dualism, distinguishing between the substances of the human body ("
res extensa") and the
mind or soul ("
res cogitans") . This crucial distinction would be left unresolved and lead to what is known as the
mind-body problem, since the two substances in the Cartesian system are independent of each other and irreducible.
Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716)
Leibniz was the last of the great Rationalists, who contributed heavily to other fields such as
mathematics. His system however wasn't developed independently of these advances. Leibniz rejected Cartesian dualism, and denied the existence of a material world. In Leibniz's view there are infinitely many simple substances, which he called "
monads" (possibly taking the term from the work of
Anne Conway).
Leibniz developed his theory of monads in response to both Descartes and
Spinoza. In rejecting this response he was forced to arrive at his own solution. Monads are the fundamental unit of reality, according to Leibniz, constituting both inanimate and animate things. These units of reality represent the universe, though they're not subject to the laws of causality or space (which he called "
well-founded phenomena"). Leibniz therefore introduced his principle of
pre-established harmony, in order to account for apparent causality in the world.
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804)
Immanuel Kant started as a traditional rationalist, having studied the rationalists Leibniz and
Wolff, but after studying
David Hume's works, which "awoke [him] from [his] dogmatic slumbers", he developed a distinctive and very influential rationalism of his own which attempted to synthesise the traditional rationalist and empiricist traditions.
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