Rationalism
Rationalism is a broad family of positions in epistemology. Perhaps the best general description of rationalism is the view that there are some distinctive aspects or faculties of the mind that (1) are distinct from passive aspects of the mind such as sense-perceptions and (2) someway or other constitute a special source (perhaps only a partial source) of knowledge. These distinctive aspects are typically associated or identified with our abilities to engage in mathematics and abstract reasoning, and the knowledge they provide is often seen as of a type that could not have come from other sources. Philosophers who resist rationalism are usually grouped under the heading of empiricists, who are often allied under the claim that all our knowledge comes from experience.
More precise delimitation on this point is quite difficult. Formulated weakly enough, some form of rationalism is obviously true. For instance, there can be no question that we are born with some innate abilities - it is just this fact that allows humans to consistently react in sophisticated ways to the world's causal influence on them, in constrast to rocks. Moreover, we certainly have some sort of ability to reason and draw conclusions that are not explicitly handed to us. Yet many philosophers have felt that stronger rationalist claims are true. Kant, for example, argued that we can know that every event has a cause independently of experience, and such a claim is not entailed by the claim that we have some innate reasoning ability.
The debate around which the rationalism/empiricism distinction revolves is one of the oldest and most continuous in philosophy. Some of Plato's most explicit arguments address the topic and it was arguably the central concern of many of the Modern thinkers. Indeed, Kant's principal works were concerned with our 'pure' faculties, which are the very aspects of the mind whose existence and role were in question. Contemporary philosophers have advanced and refined the issue, though there are current thinkers who align themselves with either side of the tradition.
History of rationalism
It is difficult to identify a major figure in the history to whom some rationalist doctrine has not been attributed at some point. One reason for this is that there is no question that we possess some sort of reasoning ability that allows us to come to know some facts we otherwise wouldn't (for instance, mathematical facts), and every philosopher has had to acknowledge this fact. Another reason is that the very business of philosophy is to achieve knowledge by using the rational faculties, in contrast to, for instance, mystical approaches to knowledge. Nevertheless, some philosophical figures stand out as attributing even greater significance to our reasoning abilities. Three are discussed here: Plato, Descartes and Kant. The reader is also referred to the separate articles on two other thinkers who are traditionally counted in the rationalist camp: Baruch Spinoza and Gottfried Leibniz.
Plato
The most famous metaphysical doctrine of the great Greek philosopher Plato is his doctrine of 'Forms,' as espoused in The Republic and other dialogues. The Forms are described as being outside of the world we experience by our senses, but as somehow constituting the metaphysical basis of the world. Exactly how they fulfill this function is generally only gestured at through analogies, though the Timaeus describes the Forms as operating as blueprints for the craftsman of the universe.
The distinctiveness of Plato's rationalism lies in another aspect of his theory of Forms. Though the common sense position is that our senses are our best means of getting in touch with reality, Plato held that our reasoning ability was the one thing that allowed us to approach the Forms, the most fundamental aspects of reality. It is worth pausing to reflect on how radical this idea is: on such a view, philosophical attempts to understand the nature of 'good' or 'just' are not mere analyses of concepts we have formed, but rather explorations of eternal things that are responsible for shaping the reality of the sensory world.
Descartes
The French philosopher René Descartes, whose Meditations on First Philosophy defined the course of much philosophy from then up till the present day, stood near the beginning of the Western European Enlightenment. Impressed by the power of mathematics and the development of the new science, Descartes was confronted with two questions: how was it that people were coming to attain such deep knowledge of the workings of the universe, and how was it that they had spent so long not doing so?
Regarding the latter question, Descartes concluded that people had been mislead by putting too much faith in the testimony of their senses. In particular, he thought such a mistake was behind the then-dominant physics of Aristotle. Aristotle and the later Scholastics, in Descartes' mind, had used their reasoning abilities well enough on the basis of what their senses told them. The problem was that they had chosen the wrong starting point for their inquiries.
By contrast, the advancements in the new science (some of which Descartes could claim for himself) were based in a very different starting point: the 'pure light of reason.' In Descartes' view, God had equipped us with a faculty that was able to understand the fundamental essence of the two types of substance that made up the world: intellectual substance (of which minds are instances) and physical substance (matter). Not only did God give us such a faculty, Descartes claimed, but he made us such that, when using the faculty, we are unable to question its deliverances. Not only that, but God left us the means to conclude that the faculty was a gift from a non-deceptive omnipotent creator.
Kant
ReferencesISBN links support NWE through referral fees
Primary sources
- Descartes, René (1637), Discourse on Method.
- Spinoza, Baruch (1677), Ethics.
- Leibniz, Gottfried (1714), Monadology.
- Kant, Immanuel, (1781/1787), Critique of Pure Reason.
Secondary sources
- Audi, Robert (ed., 1999), The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 1995. 2nd edition, 1999.
- Blackburn, Simon (1996), The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy, Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK, 1994. Paperback edition with new Chronology, 1996.
- Bourke, Vernon J. (1962), "Rationalism", p. 263 in Runes (1962).
- Lacey, A.R. (1996), A Dictionary of Philosophy, 1st edition, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1976. 2nd edition, 1986. 3rd edition, Routledge, London, UK, 1996.
- Runes, Dagobert D. (ed., 1962), Dictionary of Philosophy, Littlefield, Adams, and Company, Totowa, NJ.
See also
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External links
- Markie, Peter (2004), "Rationalism vs. Empiricism", Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Edward N. Zalta (ed.),
- John F. Hurst (1867), History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology
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