Rationalists & Empiricists

The seventeenth and eighteenth-century fight over where knowledge comes from. Descartes' doubt, Spinoza and Leibniz against Locke, Berkeley and Hume, and Kant claiming to settle it.

Part of Philosophy

20 moments in this segment.

1. 1637 - Descartes pt. 1 - Context (Philosophize This!). A deeper look, part of the history of philosophy.
2. 1640 - René Descartes (1596–1650). "I think, therefore I am", radical doubt and the foundation of modern philosophy.
3. 1640 - Descartes' Cogito argument (Wireless Philosophy). The argument that grounds modern certainty.
4. 1640 - René Descartes (The School of Life). Doubt, the cogito, and the method.
5. 1641 - Descartes pt. 2 (Philosophize This!). A deeper look, part of the history of philosophy.
6. 1670 - Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677). God-or-Nature: a single substance, geometry applied to ethics, freedom through understanding.
7. 1670 - Baruch Spinoza (The School of Life). God-or-Nature and the ethics of understanding.
8. 1675 - Spinoza: a complete guide to life (Then & Now). A deep dive into Spinoza's thought.
9. 1690 - John Locke (1632–1704). The mind as a blank slate, knowledge from experience, and government by consent.
10. 1690 - John Locke's empiricism. The blank slate and knowledge from experience.
11. 1700 - Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716). Monads, the best of all possible worlds, and the calculus, the last universal genius.
12. 1700 - Locke, Berkeley & Empiricism (Crash Course). The British empiricist line.
13. 1748 - Hume and the Problem of Induction. A deeper look, part of the history of philosophy.
14. 1750 - Voltaire (1694–1778). The wit of the Enlightenment: tolerance, reason, and "écrasez l'infâme."
15. 1750 - David Hume (1711–1776). Causation as habit, the is/ought gap, and the most rigorous skepticism of the age.
16. 1750 - David Hume (The School of Life). Skepticism, causation, and the is/ought gap.
17. 1750 - A History of Philosophy: David Hume (Wheaton). A lecture on Hume's empiricism and skepticism.
18. 1903 - William James (1842–1910). Pragmatism and the stream of consciousness, truth as what works. This photograph dates from 1903.
19. 1936 - Bertrand Russell (1872–1970). Logic, the theory of descriptions, and a public conscience, a founder of analytic philosophy. This photograph dates from 1936.
20. 2020-03-31 - What Pragmatism Means - William James. A deeper look, part of the history of philosophy.