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Continental rationalism is a philosophical creed that human reason is the source of knowledge. It originated with René Descartes and spread during the 17th and 18th centuries, primarily in continental Europe. In contrast, its contemporary rival, British Empiricism, held that all knowledge comes to us through experience or through our senses. At issue is the fundamental source of human knowledge, and what the proper techniques are for verifying what we think we know. (See Epistemology.)
Rationalists argued that starting with intuitively-understood basic principles, like axioms of geometry, one could deductively derive what was true. Descartes, with his mathematical background, was naturally drawn toward this method, and famously claimed to derive his own existence from pure reason ( cogito, ergo sum). On the heels of his work came continental philosophers such as Spinoza and Leibniz who sought to enlarge and refine the fundamental theory of rationalism.
Immanuel KantImmanuel Kant ( April 22, 1724 February 12, 1804) was a Prussian philosopher, generally regarded as the last major philosopher of the Enlightenment, having a major impact on the Romantic and Idealist philosophies of the 19th century, and as one of history started as a rationalist, but after being exposed to David HumeDavid Hume ( April 26, 1711 August 25, 1776), Scottish philosopher and historian and, with Adam Smith and Thomas Reid among others, one of the most important figures in the Scottish Enlightenment. Hume is sometimes regarded as the third and most radical o's works which "awoke [him] from [his] dogmatic slumbers", Kant arguably synthesized the rationalist and empiricist traditions.The more modern usage of the term "rationalist" refers to the belief that human behaviour and beliefs should be based on reason. See rationalism.
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