Rationalism Introduction
Rationalism is a philosophical current from the 17th century. It establishes reason as the only reliable source of all human knowledge.
For her, nothing more than reason is necessary for man to understand and dominate the entire Universe around him, finding absolute knowledge, or the Truth, as he says Rene Descartes.
Among the philosophers who conceived Rationalism, the following stand out:
1. B. Espinoza
2. GW Leibniz
3. Ch. Wolff
4. Plato
5. Descartes
6. Noam Chomsky
Rationalism is based on analysis and demonstration in order to conceive a priori knowledge, that is, knowledge that is not innate – that which we have had since we were born and which we were not required to teach – and not even empirical – knowledge arising from the technique of experimentation and repetition.
However, this aspect does not demonstrate a denial of innate knowledge. Rationalists only refute knowledge empirical, given that this can be flawed if the results come from our human senses.
In Rationalism, every event is attributed a cause and effect. And, with a reasoning methodology based on reason, we try to determine these aspects.
Rene Descartes
René Descartes, considered the father of Modern Philosophy, was one of the fervent defenders of Rationalism, considered its creator.
According to him, only Rationalism would lead man to find the Absolute Truth. This is because he argues that our senses are flawed and unreliable, that is, they give us a distorted image of the Universe around us and not what it truly is.
Since the first step of logical relations cannot be taken through this image, Descartes is convinced that only with pure reason can we understand and find the Truth.
Based on Rationalism and his studies in geometry, René Descartes developed his scientific method, divided into four parts:
Evidence: never accept something as true if you do not clearly know it as such.
Analysis: divide each of the difficulties you examine into as many parts as possible and as necessary to better resolve them.
Synthesis: conducting thoughts in order, starting with the simplest and easiest to know objects, to climb, little by little, as if by steps, until the knowledge of the most complex ones, and even assuming an order between those that do not naturally precede each other to others.
Control: Carry out complete enumerations and general reviews everywhere, in order to be sure that nothing is omitted.
Descartes separated ideas into three fields :
the adventitious: ideas arising from the human senses;
the factitious: which derive from our imagination;
innate: which are with us from birth, without the need for experimental proof.
Differences between Rationalism and Empiricism
Despite being similar in relation to the use of logical propositions in search of absolute truth, Rationalism and Empiricism have characteristics that contradict each other.
O Empiricism states that all reality that we know and the knowledge acquired comes from sensory experience , and all knowledge that matters must be possible to measure and scientifically verify .
In this scope, it allies itself with natural sciences in order to advance in this area through this methodology .
Descartes contradicts this line of thought when he describes our sensory experiences as dubious and just images that reflect reality, leading to the divergence of Rationalism on this point.
Rationalism differs from Empiricism in that it does not consider the experimental method as a good resource in the search for truth. Among other things, Rationalism supports intuition and innate ideas , knowledge present in human beings without prior visualization, while Empiricism repudiates such ideas.
Rationalism still uses the deductive method for logical reasoning, when starting from generic knowledge to obtain more specific knowledge. Empiricism, on the other hand, uses the inductive method, starting from specific knowledge in order to obtain one of greater scope.