Rationalism Vs. Empiricism

Europe’s 16th century was a time of great religious upheaval and disorder. Ardent opposition to modifying medieval customs resulted in the Thirty Years War, strict limitations for learning, and significant resistance to new ideas. Monumental discoveries, like those of Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo were swept under the table because they delivered a crushing blow to all geocentric views–the view preferred by the church. The curiosity of such men, however, must have been contagious–for emerging from the flames of the Reformation, was the individual: eager to learn and willing to doubt. The philosophy of the 17th century Frenchman René Descartes, which culminated with his momentous cogito, ergo sum, embodied the pervasive intellectual transformation of the era. For Descartes, everything was open to doubt except conscious experience, meaning the common denominator for all of our knowledge is ourselves. Re-emphasizing the importance of the individual hearkened back to Socrates who claimed we should know ourselves before tackling loftier metaphysical issues–and this is exactly the turn philosophy then took, which is why Descartes is often considered the “father of modern philosophy.”

In trying to better understand the self, it seemed natural for Descartes and succeeding philosophers to study the nature of knowledge in attempt to understand how it is we know what we know. This branch of philosophy is called epistemology and it replaced metaphysics and ontology as the most fervently pondered sect of philosophy during this time. The history of epistemology has since seen some of its most prominent characters divided into two categories: the rationalists and empiricists.

In accepting our existence as our founding axiom, Descartes argued that we are able to then syllogistically build more advanced truths by deducing from already established truths–that all possible knowledge of the world is inherently available, regardless of our relationship with the world itself. This is essentially what rationalists believe. Rationalists believe that knowledge is inborn and is simply waiting for us to seek it out. Descartes, along with Spinoza and Leibniz are typically considered the “Continental Rationalists.” Plato’s universals and particulars are an example of classical rationalism. For Plato we are able to conceive the perfected version of something, a triangle for instance, despite never encountering one in the external world–while our senses may fool us into believing we are experiencing a perfect triangle, there is likely to always be an out of place molecule or interference making it imperfect. The reason we are able to conceptualize a perfect triangle without ever experiencing one with our senses is that we have mentally tapped into the realm of “universals”, which holds the perfect form of all things. ‘Particulars’ are the mere imperfect adaptations of universals which we experience in the material world. Plato explains these ideas beautifully in his “allegory of the cave” in The Republic.