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In philosophy and in its current sense, rationalism is a line of thought that appeals to reason or the intellect as a primary or fundamental source of knowledge or justification". [1] It is typically contrasted with empiricism , which appeals to sensory experience as a primary or fundamental source of knowledge or justification. [ 2 ]
In philosophy, empiricism is an epistemological view which holds that true knowledge or justification comes only or primarily from sensory experience and empirical evidence. [1] It is one of several competing views within epistemology, along with rationalism and skepticism .
Rationalism has a philosophical history dating from antiquity.The analytical nature of much of philosophical enquiry, the awareness of apparently a priori domains of knowledge such as mathematics, combined with the emphasis of obtaining knowledge through the use of rational faculties (commonly rejecting, for example, direct revelation) have made rationalist themes very prevalent in the history ...
Both empiricism and rationalism are individualist theories of knowledge, whereas historicism is a social epistemology. While historicism also acknowledges the role of experience, it differs from empiricism by assuming that sensory data cannot be understood without considering the historical and cultural circumstances in which observations are made.
The debate between empiricism and rationalism centers on the origins of human knowledge. Empiricism emphasizes that sense experience is the primary source of all knowledge. Some empiricists express this view by describing the mind as a blank slate that only develops ideas about the external world through the sense data it receives from the ...
Socrates (c. 470 – 399 BC). The first historical figure who is usually called an "intellectualist" was the Greek philosopher Socrates (c. 470 – 399 BC), who taught that intellectualism allows that "one will do what is right or [what is] best, just as soon as one truly understands what is right or best"; that virtue is a matter of the intellect, because virtue and knowledge are related ...
These concessions preserve the spirit of empiricism insofar as the restriction to experience still applies to knowledge about the external world. [30] In some fields, like metaphysics or ethics, the choice between empiricism and rationalism makes a difference not just for how a given claim is justified but for whether it is justified at all ...
An example of this shift is the influential multi-volume work A History of Indian Philosophy by Surendranath Dasgupta (1887–1952). Philosophers during this period were influenced both by their own traditions and by new ideas from Western philosophy. [129] Swami Vivekananda argued that all religions are valid paths toward the divine.