Paladin Books
1 total work
Accessible to students and general readers alike, this concise survey traces the main elements of rationalism from the classical period to the 20th century. It includes accounts of the arguments of the 17th-century rationalists, Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz, on scientific knowledge, mind and body, and freedom and necessity, compared with the empiricist counter-arguments of Locke and Hume, and the synthesis of Kant. Later sections carry the story forward to the ideas of Hegel, and more recent developments in Russell, Wittgenstein and Ayer, Quine and Kripke, Chomsky and Popper, together with rationalist and anti-rationalist elements in modern ethics.