School

Rationalism

Rationalism holds that reason plays a primary role in knowledge—often defending a priori insight against pure empiricism.

Overview

Early modern rationalists such as Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz built metaphysical systems from clear and distinct ideas or necessary truths. The label is comparative: few thinkers deny experience entirely, but they deny that all knowledge reduces to sensory impressions.

Historical notes

Seventeenth-century continental rationalism responds to skepticism and scientific change; later Idealism and analytic a priori debates continue related arguments.

Core ideas

  • Some truths are knowable by reason independent of particular sensory episodes.
  • Mathematics and logic model secure knowledge.
  • Metaphysics can be systematic and demonstrative.
  • Clear and distinct ideas (or sufficient reason) guide inquiry.

Thinkers in this archive

René Descartes , Baruch Spinoza , Karl Popper , Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz , Maimonides

FAQ

What is rationalism in philosophy?

It is the view that reason is a primary source of knowledge, often including a priori truths.

Who are famous rationalists?

Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz are the classic early modern trio.

Where are rationalism quotes?

This page gathers related English passages from the archive’s rationalist labels.

  1. I think, therefore I am.
  2. Once in a lifetime, everything must be doubted.
  3. The things we conceive very clearly and very distinctly are all true.
  4. A free man thinks of nothing less than of death; and his wisdom is a meditation not on death but on life.
  5. God, or Nature.
  6. We may become the makers of our fate when we have ceased to pose as its prophets.
  7. the best of all possible worlds
  8. Accept the truth from whatever source it comes.
  9. Blessedness is not the reward of virtue, but virtue itself.
  10. It is of the nature of reason to perceive things under a certain form of eternity.
  11. The true end of the state is in reality freedom.
  12. Our knowledge can only be finite, while our ignorance must necessarily be infinite.
  13. It is easy to obtain confirmations…for nearly every theory—if we look for confirmations.
  14. Good sense is the best distributed thing in the world.
  15. I am, I exist—whenever it is uttered by me, or conceived in the mind, it is necessarily true.
  16. A free man thinks of nothing less than of death.
  17. I shall endeavor not to laugh at human actions, nor to weep over them, nor to hate them, but to understand them.
  18. We feel and know by experience that we are eternal.
  19. We must plan for freedom, and not only for security, if for no other reason than that only freedom can make security secure.
  20. Science must begin with myths, and with the criticism of myths.
  21. Nothing is without a reason.
  22. to change my desires rather than the order of the world
  23. Not to laugh at, lament, or detest human actions, but to understand them.