School
Rationalism
The view that reason, rather than the senses, is the chief source and test of knowledge.
The continental rationalists of the seventeenth century held that some knowledge can be gained by reason alone, independently of experience, and they modelled philosophy on the certainty of mathematics.
- Tradition
- Western
Philosophers
- René Descartes1596–1650
- Baruch Spinoza1632–1677
Sources
- Peter Markie and M. Folescu, Rationalism vs. Empiricism, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy