Rationalism: What Is It and How to Apply It To Everyday Life?

Rationalism is a philosophical current that defends that reason is the main way of acquiring knowledge. Learn all about it in this article.

Last update: 27 May, 2022

Rationalism is a philosophical current that defends that reason is the main way of acquiring knowledge. This position emerged in continental Europe during the 17th and 18th centuries and its founder is considered to be Ren Descartes.

The claim that true knowledge comes from the ability to reason marked a substantial change in the history of thought. Until then, the belief that religious faith and the word of God were the only sources prevailed.

In todays article, well tell you what rationalism consists of and how it can be applied to everyday life.

The origin of rationalism took place during the scientific revolution of the 17th century. Within this context, the problem of knowledge (its origin and foundation) was introduced into the philosophical debates of the time. From there, two great philosophical currents emerged: rationalism and empiricism. Both share confidence in the scientific revolution that was occurring at the time, but they also have marked differences.

While rationalism emphasizes the role of reason in the acquisition of knowledge, empiricism stresses the role of experience and evidence as the main sources of knowledge..

The founder of rationalism was the French philosopher Ren Descartes, who aspired to turn philosophy into a scientific discipline and provided it with a method in which the role of reason would dominate. Thus, in his work The Discourse of Method, Descartes proposed a procedure (popularly known as the Cartesian method) to reach true knowledge through doubt.

This method consisted of 4 rules:

Later, philosophers such as Nicolas Malebranche, Baruch Spinoza, and Gottlieb Leibniz formulated their rationalist positions on the origin of knowledge. Therefore, theyre also recognized as some of the main drivers of this movement.

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Within rationalism, there are different positions on knowledge. For example, Descartes rationalism is not the same as Leibnizs or Spinozas.

However, they all share essential characteristics. These are the following:

As weve already said, there are many different positions within this philosophical current. Among them, the following stand out:

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Believe it or not, we usually apply reason as the main source of knowledge in the following scenarios:

As you can see, in order to attain such knowledge, the exercise of reason was necessary. After all, with evidence alone, we would have remained captivated by the phenomena without delving into or analyzing their ultimate causes.

Rationalism was a philosophical movement that not only placed the problem of knowledge among the main topics of discussion, but also brought up topics such as the relationship between the body and the mind as well as the nature of passion and freedom. In fact, these debates continue to be the subject of interesting philosophical reflections.

Moreover, by defending the self-sufficiency of human reason to explain reality, rationalismcontributed to placing the subject in a privileged position vis--vis religious authority. This marked a very important and interesting shift from the dominant thinking throughout the Middle Ages.

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Rationalism: What Is It and How to Apply It To Everyday Life?