Rationalism

We explain what rationalism is, its origin and its main characteristics. Also, its representatives, etymology and more.

What is rationalism?

Rationalism is a philosophical current that defends the primacy of reason as a source of knowledge. It emerged at the end of the 17th century, in France, and was characterized by recognizing reason as the only valid source of knowledge and access to truth. Its main representatives were René Descartes, Baruch Spinoza and Gottfried Leibniz.

In direct opposition to English empiricist thought—which was based on experience perceived through the senses in order to understand the world—rationalism maintained that knowledge comes from ideas and understanding as the faculty that knows them.

For rationalists, the senses are not a valid source of knowledge since they are liable to be deceived. This is one of the main reasons why the opposition between rationalists and empiricists arose.

Both the works of Descartes and those of Leibniz and Spinoza, among the most important rationalists, They take mathematics or geometry as a model of knowledge to imitate.. The three saw in these systems of thought ways to guarantee access to the truth and certain knowledge in which it was not possible to find error. An example of this is the use of the deductive method by Descartes, or what Spinoza called his most important work. Demonstrated ethics according to geometric order.

the word “rationalism” comes from Latin ratiowhich means “reason” or “calculation” and refers to the human ability to establish relationships between various concepts in order to understand the world.

See also: Philosophical knowledge

History of rationalism

philosophical rationalism arose in contrast to medieval theological thought prevailing in France in the 17th century. This thought, mainly Christian and Thomistic, held that truth could only be accessed through sacred writings and divine revelation.

In that context Rationalism was defined as a philosophical current which sought to explain the human experience and the events that occurred around it based on logic, intellect and the use of reason.

Historically, this was possible thanks to the new ideas of the Renaissance, which allowed the dominant theological model to be put into crisis. At the same time, the religious crisis experienced by the Catholic Church after the appearance of Luther and Protestantism opened the way to a new philosophical search to find a criterion of truth that was not regulated by institutions or some other form of power.

In general terms, René Descartes (1596-1650) is considered the father of rationalismas well as the inaugurator of modernity. His work brought into play the criteria of truth established by the scholasticism of the time and determined that it was necessary to find a new way of constructing and forming knowledge. With the publication of Discourse of the method (1637) and Metaphysical meditations (1641), Descartes opened a completely innovative field not only for the time, but even for philosophy today.

The formulation of ego cogito Cartesianism (the “thinking self” that realizes itself as existing while thinking) marked a before and after in the history of Western philosophy. His mark was so profound that to this day it continues to be a source of discussion and the focus of philosophical debates.

Its appearance, for example, not only gave way to rationalism as a philosophical school, but also marked the way for many other philosophers and thinkers, who could not have sustained their theories if it were not for the formulation of the cogito. The Critique of pure reasonpublished by Immanuel Kant in 1781, maintains and presents itself as the total conciliation between rationalism and empiricism, until then confronted as philosophical positions.

General postulates of rationalism

Rationalism is a philosophical current that originated between the 16th and 17th centuries. Yes ok had different representatives and exhibitorssuch as Descartes, Leibniz or Spinoza, there are among them some general features that can be attributed as characteristic of the current of thought itself. Among them are:

• Ideas are innate. Rationalism considers innate all knowledge not acquired through learning or experience. Innate ideas are supposed to be present in the human mind from birth, and were put there by God or some other creative entity.
• Reason is a source of knowledge. All rationalists, beyond their differences, maintain that reason is the source of knowledge par excellence, since through it the truth of things can be accessed.
• The senses give dark knowledge. Although not all philosophers of this current condemned the senses as a source of knowledge, most agree that any learning given by sensitivity does not have the same degree of certainty as that obtained through reason. The senses can be deceived, they make mistakes and often fail.
• All knowledge is deductive. Both Descartes, Leibniz and Spinoza considered that mathematics should be a model for all sciences to imitate, since in it the truth is guaranteed by the deductive method which, when well applied, cannot fall into error.

Representatives of rationalism

Among the main representatives of rationalism are:

• René Descartes (1596-1650). He was a French philosopher, mathematician and physicist and the first modern rationalist. He laid the foundations of rationalism with his work Discourse of the method and his contributions were of great influence on philosophy, mathematics and physics. One of his most famous phrases is: “I think, therefore I am.”
• Baruch Spinoza (1652-1677). He was a Dutch philosopher who stood out for proposing the relationship between reason and the passions. Spinoza considered the passions to be a type of affection, so they were an idea of ​​reason. His concept of passion is related to the Greek philosophy of Stoicism in which feelings could be controlled by the willpower of the individual.
• Blaise Pascal (1623-1662). He was a French mathematician, physicist and philosopher who stood out for his contributions, such as the arithmetic machine, his new theories about vacuum and Treatise on fluid balance. From philosophy he maintained that religions (or the need to believe) were nothing more than a form of manifestation of the infinite anxiety of the human being.
• Gottfried Leibniz (1646-1716). He was a German polymath, philosopher and politician who stood out for his large number of contributions, such as mathematical differential calculus, binary language (which later became the basis of the programming language) or dynamics as part of the physics studied by the motion. He stated that no event occurred without a sufficient reason for it to do so.

Rationalism and empiricism

Both empiricism and rationalism emerged between the 16th and 17th centuries. Both schools of thought had a skeptical basis. and they agreed that a new way of doing philosophy and knowledge in general had to be found.

However, the point on which they could not agree is where the source of knowledge should be placed: sensitivity or reason.

While Empiricism maintains that all knowledge begins in sensory experiencerationalism places reason as the source of all knowledge. Thus, both schools or currents are directly opposed in the way in which each one thinks about the origin of knowledge.

The discrepancies between rationalism and empiricism remain to this day. Some thinkers, however, attempted to reconcile one position with the other.

The most successful in this attempt was Immanuel Kant, who saw a possible conciliation in the process in which knowledge was given. For Kant it was true that all knowledge begins in experiencebut for him the work of reason was needed to give order and unity to the multiplicity perceived through the senses, which was inherently chaotic and incomprehensible.

Continue with: Epistemology

References

• Verneaux, R. (1999). General epistemology or criticism of knowledge. Herder.
• Fraenkel, Carlos; Perinetti, Dario; Smith, Justin EH (eds.). (2011). The Rationalists: Between Tradition and Innovation.
• Pereboom, D. (ed.). (1999). The Rationalists: Critical Essays on Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz. Rowman & Littlefield.
• Descartes, R. (2004). Discourse of the method. Colihue Editions SRL.
• Descartes, R. (2011). Metaphysical meditations. Editorial Alliance.
• “What is rationalism?” (video) in Study
• “Rationalism” in Britannica
• “Rationalism: the reason to arrive at the truth” in Filco
• “Rationalism” in Philosophy in Spanish
• “Spinoza against the Stoic extirpation of the passions” in Digitum UM
• “Pascal, the mathematical prodigy who discovered a new world of probabilities” in BBVA open mind