All 33 Uses

rationalism
in
Sophie's World
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This unshakable faith in human reason is called rationalism.†
Chpt 4 *

rationalism = the doctrine that knowledge is acquired primarily by reason rather than by experience
Like every aspect of Plato's philosophy, his political philosophy is characterized by rationalism.†
Chpt 9
More people now emphasized that we cannot reach God through rationalism because God is in all ways unknowable.†
Chpt 16
So we usually make a distinction between British empiricism and Continental rationalism.†
Chpt 20
Rationalism 3.†
Chpt 23
The next key word is rationalism.†
Chpt 23
I thought rationalism went out with Hume.†
Chpt 23
He was familiar both with the rationalism of Descartes and Spinoza and the empiricism of Locke, Berkeley, and Hume.†
Chpt 24
And finally we could perhaps say that Kant succeeded in showing the way out of the impasse that philosophy had reached in the struggle between rationalism and empiricism.†
Chpt 24
You could, for example, say that Descartes's rationalism was a thesis—which was contradicted by Hume's empirical antithesis.†
Chpt 26
A rationalist is someone who believes that human reason is the primary source of our knowledge of the world.†
Chpt 4
With his unshakable faith in human reason he was decidedly a rationalist.†
Chpt 7
They were all typical rationalists, convinced that reason was the only path to knowledge.†
Chpt 18
We agreed that they had one important thing in common, namely, that they were both rationalists.†
Chpt 20
And a rationalist is someone who believes strongly in the importance of reason.†
Chpt 20
That's right, a rationalist believes in reason as the primary source of knowledge, and he may also believe that man has certain innate ideas that exist in the mind prior to all experience.†
Chpt 20
Rationalist thinking of this kind was typical for philosophy of the seventeenth century.†
Chpt 20
The leading rationalists in the seventeenth century were Descartes, who was French; Spinoza, who was Dutch; and Leibniz, who was German.†
Chpt 20
There were piles of old wreckage, both written and spoken, from the Middle Ages and the rationalist philosophy of the seventeenth century.†
Chpt 21
In continuation of the idea of an unalterable ego, many rationalists had taken it for granted that man had an eternal soul.†
Chpt 21
Hume also rebelled against rationalist thought in the area of ethics.†
Chpt 21
The rationalists had always held that the ability to distinguish between right and wrong is inherent in human reason.†
Chpt 21
But our watches do not always agree ....Hilde read how Alberto told Sophie about the Renaissance and the new science, the seventeenth-century rationalists and British empiricism.†
Chpt 23
It could only be a question of time before irrationalism and ignorance would give way to an 'enlightened' humanity.†
Chpt 23

irrationalism = belief or behavior that emphasizes instinct, feelings, or faith above reason

standard prefix: The prefix "ir-" in irrationalism means not and reverses the meaning of rationalism. This prefix is sometimes used before words beginning with "R" as seen in words like irrational, irregular, and irresistible.
Remember that the rationalists believed that the basis for all human knowledge lay in the mind.†
Chpt 24
But he thought the rationalists went too far in their claims as to how much reason can contribute, and he also thought the empiricists placed too much emphasis on sensory experience.†
Chpt 24
But—and here Kant stretches his hand out to the rationalists—in our reason there are also decisive factors that determine how we perceive the world around us.†
Chpt 24
I see now how he could think both the rationalists and the empiricists were right up to a point.†
Chpt 24
The rationalists had almost forgotten the importance of experience, and the empiricists had shut their eyes to the way our own mind influences the way we see the world.†
Chpt 24
Here the rationalists, like Descartes, had tried to prove that there must be a God simply because we have the idea of a 'supreme being.'†
Chpt 24
In this he agreed with the rationalists, who said the ability to distinguish between right and wrong is inherent in human reason.†
Chpt 24
Kant agreed with the rationalists in some things and with the empiricists in others.†
Chpt 26
Man is not really such a rational creature as the eighteenth-century rationalists liked to think.†
Chpt 30

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Definitions:

(1) (rationalism as in: rationalism v. empiricism)
the doctrine that knowledge is acquired primarily by reason rather than by experience
(2) (meaning too rare to warrant focus)
Rationalism is also used more generally to stress the importance of reason.

rationalism in Sophie's World (Auto-generated)

rationalism
in
Sophie's World
(Auto-generated)