New rationalism. Rationalism of modern philosophy, its formation and development

INTRODUCTION

The new era, which began in the 17th century, became an era of affirmation and gradual victory in Western Europe capitalism as a new mode of production, an era of rapid development of science and technology. Under the influence of such exact sciences as mechanics and mathematics, mechanism became established in philosophy. Within the framework of this type of worldview, nature was viewed as a huge mechanism, and man as an proactive and active worker.

The main theme of modern philosophy was the theme of knowledge. Two major movements emerged: empiricism and rationalism, which differently interpreted the sources and nature of human knowledge. Frolov I.T. and others. Introduction to philosophy: Textbook. manual for universities / - 3rd ed., revised. and additional - M.: Respublikayu-2012.-P.215.

Supporters of empiricism (Bacon, Hobbes, Locke) argued that the main source of reliable knowledge about the world is human sensations and experience. Supporters of empiricism called for relying in everything on the data of experience and human practice.

Proponents of rationalism (Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz) believed that the main source of reliable knowledge is knowledge. The founder of rationalism is Descartes, the author of the expression “question everything.” He believed that in everything one should rely not on faith, but on reliable conclusions and not accept anything as the final truth. Descartes' views have not lost their relevance to this day. It is all the more interesting to study his philosophy, try to understand his worldview and, if possible, apply all this in our everyday life.

In ideological terms, the advent of the New Age was prepared by the creative activity, first of all, of the philosophers and educators of the Renaissance. And let us add: the turbulent processes of progressive changes in the political, economic, cultural, scientific and entire sphere of spiritual life of the New Age were based, first of all, on the state and level of development of philosophy of that time.

Philosophy not only was the ideological basis of the progressive changes of the New Age, but also preceded these changes. The new time has come first in the spiritual sphere of philosophy, and only then in reality.

The purpose of this work is to study the ideology and thoughts of the great modern philosopher Rene Descartes.

The main objective of the work is to understand the specifics of Descartes' philosophy, to determine what its rationality is and how it can be applied in modern life.

RATIONALISM OF NEW TIMES

Prerequisites for the development of new philosophical movements

The philosophy of modern times covers the period of the 17th - first half of the 19th centuries and is divided into several stages: Enlightenment of the 17th - early 18th centuries, considered in this textbook, and German classical philosophy of the 18th - first half of the 19th century. At this time, humanity stepped into a new period of its history, marked by a powerful civilizational breakthrough. Over three centuries, economic, political, and general cultural forms have changed human existence. In the economy, manufacturing and the associated division of industrial labor have become widespread; more and more more people machines began to be used. IN political sphere new ideas about human rights and freedoms emerged, about rule of law, methods began to be developed to implement these ideas. In the cultural sphere, scientific knowledge began to come to the fore. Outstanding discoveries were made in natural science and mathematics that prepared scientific and technological revolution. Philosophy was at the forefront of all these changes. She foreshadowed, stimulated and generalized them.

The seventeenth century is often called the “age of science.” Losev A.F. History of philosophy in summary. - M.: Mysl, 1989. -P.126. Scientific knowledge about the world was valued very highly, which is confirmed by the content and even form of philosophy. Philosophy participating in development scientific knowledge and often ahead of it, it strove to become a “great restoration of the sciences,” to use the name of the works of F. Bacon, “a discourse on method,” to use the name of one of Descartes’ works. Philosophers, like R. Descartes, B. Pascal, G. Leibniz, were sometimes themselves pioneers in mathematics and natural science. At the same time, they did not try to make philosophy, which had actually ceased to be the handmaiden of theology, into the handmaiden of the natural sciences. On the contrary, they assigned a special place to philosophy, as Plato and Aristotle also wanted. Philosophy was supposed to fulfill the role of the broadest doctrine, synthesizing knowledge about the natural world, about man as a part of nature and his special “nature”, essence, about society, about human spirit and, of course, about God as the primary essence, the primary cause and prime mover of everything that exists. In other words, the processes of philosophizing were thought of as “metaphysical reflections,” to again use the title of Descartes’ work. That is why the philosophers of the 17th century. are called “metaphysicians”. To this, however, it must be added that their metaphysics (the doctrine of the principles of all being, the essence of the world, the absolute, unconditional and supersensible; in addition, the term “metaphysics” is used to designate a method and way of thinking opposite to dialectics) was not a simple continuation traditional metaphysics, but became its innovative processing. Thus, innovation is the most important distinguishing feature philosophy of the New Age compared to scholasticism. But it should be especially emphasized that the first philosophers of the New Age were students of neo-scholastics. However, with all the strength of their minds and souls they sought to revise, test the truth and strength of the inherited knowledge. The criticism of “idols” by F. Bacon and the method of doubt by R. Descartes in this sense are not just intellectual inventions, but features of the eras: old knowledge was revised, strong rational foundations were found for a new title. Losev A.F. History of philosophy in summary. - M.: Mysl, 1989. -P.131.

But philosophers of the XVII-XVIII centuries. They were interested not only in rational knowledge, but also in knowledge through the senses - they treated it with special attention, its reliability was proven by supporters of empiricism: Gassendi, Locke, and the French enlighteners. But Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, who are considered rationalists, also paid considerable attention to sensory experience (which, however, was critical), will and “passions of the soul,” affects, which, from their point of view, are subject and amenable to control sides of the mind.

In a word, the 17th and 18th centuries can rightly be considered centuries of rationalism. However, one should not attribute self-confident rationalism to the era of the New Time, since the philosophers of this time objectively examined the shortcomings and limitations of the human mind.Losev A.F. History of philosophy in summary. - M.: Mysl, 1989. -P.135..

Rationalism as the main feature of modern philosophy

The search for rationally substantiated and provable truths of philosophy, comparable to the truths of science, is another feature of the philosophy of the New Age. But the main difficulty was that philosophical truths, as it was later discovered, cannot be of an axiomatic nature and cannot be proven by methods accepted in mathematics. Descartes and Spinoza especially hoped for this (and seriously), trying not only to give their works the form of a scientific treatise, but also sought to conduct all reasoning using the “geometric”, axiomatic-deductive method (method of constructing scientific theories in the form of systems of axioms and postulates, and rules of inference that allow, through logical deduction, to obtain theorems and statements of a given theory; deduction is a logical operation consisting in the transition from the general to the particular). Subsequently, thinkers moved away from this method, but the desire to orient philosophy toward the exact sciences remained dominant throughout the entire modern era. It is not surprising that in the 19th and especially in the 20th centuries there was an opinion according to which the classical philosophy of the New Age exaggerated the importance of the scientific, rational, logical principle in human life and in philosophical thinking. And indeed, in the philosophy of the 17th - first half of the 19th centuries, that is, precisely the New Age (in Western terminology it is called “modern philosophy”), it was rationalistic. Here the word “rationalism” is used in in a broad sense, which unites “empiricism” ( philosophical doctrine and a direction in the theory of knowledge that recognizes sensory experience the only source of reliable knowledge), which elevates all knowledge to experience, and “rationalism” ( philosophical direction, which recognizes reason as the basis of knowledge) in a narrower sense, seeking the foundations of both experience and non-experimental knowledge in rational principles.

Rationalism can be understood as confidence in the power and ability of the mind (especially the enlightened mind, guided by the correct method) to comprehend the secrets of nature, to know the world around us and the person himself, with the help of common sense, solve practical life problems and ultimately build a society on reasonable principles. And be sure to comprehend God with the help of reason.

descartes innovation scientific method

The founder of modern philosophy was the English philosopher Francis Bacon (1561–1626), the author of the work “New Organon”, which laid the foundation for the materialistic worldview already in this new era. Bacon owns the winged words"Knowledge is power."

F. Bacon distinguishes two types of experiences: the first is “fruitful”, the purpose of which is to bring direct benefit to a person, and the second type is “luminous” experiences, where the goal is not direct benefit, but knowledge of the laws and properties of things.

The prologue to the transformation of philosophy and science was F. Bacon’s criticism of all the scholasticism that was then still in force and the doubt about the truth of what had hitherto seemed to be the truth. But doubt is only a means of discovering the path to truth. The knowledge known so far is unreliable, which is due to the unreliability of the speculative method of obtaining conclusions and evidence. To reform science, it was necessary to improve the methods of generalization - induction. To others important step there should have been a cleansing of the mind from delusions. Bacon distinguishes four types of such errors or idols - the clan, the cave, the market and the theater.

The idols of the race are determined by human nature. They are inherent in the human race as a whole, and are generated by the imperfection of our senses and their limitations.

The idols of the cave are delusions, errors arising as a result of the subjective preferences, dislikes and sympathies of the scientist.

Market idols arise as a result of communication between people due to inaccurate words and popular ideas.

Idols of the theater are delusions that exist due to faith in authorities, often presented with theatrical elation and solemnity.

Francis Bacon became the founder of modern empiricism, a supporter of the inductive method as the ascent of knowledge from individual facts to generalizations expressing the essence of the phenomena of the material world.

In contrast to empiricism, adherents of a movement called rationalism emphasized reason and logical knowledge. The founder of modern rationalism, the French philosopher and mathematician René Descartes (1596-1650), believed that reason is more important than experience and that sensory perception must certainly be justified by rational principles “I think, therefore I exist,” proclaimed R. Descartes.

At the same time, he was dissatisfied with the then traditional logic, which was more suitable for showing what was already known than for discovering something new, previously unknown.

Descartes identified four basic rules:

1. accept as true only knowledge that does not give rise to doubt;

2. mentally separate all sorts of things being studied complex problems to extremely simple elements;

3. build a clear sequence from these simple elements in the future, thus approaching the comprehension of the most complex.

4. always compile complete, without any exceptions, lists of such elements.

Rene Descartes is an exponent of the dualistic position in philosophy. It allows for two principles independent of each other, or two “substances” – a thinking one and an extended, material one. At the same time, in the theory of knowledge. R. Descartes manifests himself as an idealist. For Descartes, thinking appears to be primary, and material life turns out to be something secondary. According to Descartes, intellectual intuition, which serves as the starting point of the deductive method, should play a huge role in knowledge. Using the deductive method, you can logically deduce almost all the knowledge in the world.

The Dutch philosopher Benedict Spinoza (1632–1677), author of the Treatise on the Improvement of Reason, is also rightfully considered a rationalist. He argued that, guided by sensory knowledge, a person cannot formulate adequate ideas. Thanks to rational knowledge, a person sees that things and phenomena are not random, but are included in the chain of universal determination. Spinoza expressed a pantheistic position, essentially identifying ideas about God and nature. The natural world has two eternal attribute properties: extension and thought. Nature is its own cause. The main task of philosophy is to clarify the place of man in the system of nature, society, and state. The world, according to Spinoza, is knowable and this knowledge is limitless.

The German philosopher and mathematician, also a prominent representative of rationalism, the author of the work “Monadology” Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716) wrote about the “true” atoms or spiritual units of the world - monads. These particles of the world are eternal, they are in complex, completely harmonious relationships with each other.

English philosophers were followers of the empirical, materialistic philosophy of F. Bacon Thomas Hobbes(1588–1672) and John Locke (1634–1704) consistently advocated the union of philosophy and natural science. T. Hobbes said that the concept of “truth” can only exist in philosophy and science, but not in theology (theology is only “revealed knowledge”). Man became the center of Hobbes's philosophical interests, while man is not only a natural, but also a moral, spiritual being, the creator of culture, the creator of various artificial bodies. And the most complex of artificial bodies is the state. The philosopher dedicated his largest work, “Leviathan,” to him.

Hobbes adhered to the basic formula of sensationalism (from the Latin sensus - feeling), that all concepts in the human mind initially originate entirely or partially in the senses. At the same time, T. Hobbes noted the importance of rational exploration of the world.

D. Locke, in his essay “An Essay Concerning Human Understanding” and his other works, argues against “innate ideas.” Just as there are no innate moral principles. Everyone's soul from birth - blank slate. Knowledge arises and develops in the process of life, from experience. External experience comes to people from sensations, internal experience is formed from observations of the results of our mind, Locke calls the latter reflection.

The idealistic current in empiricism is represented by the views English philosophers George Berkeley (1685–1753) and David Hume (1711–1776). For Berkeley, author of A Treatise on the Principles of Human Knowledge, to exist is to be perceived. Things and phenomena are complexes of our sensations. Only when a thing enters our consciousness and turns out to be an “idea” does it become an existence. Is it possible to say, asks J. Berkeley, that there was sound if we did not hear it, there was color and shape if they were not perceived by sight? According to the philosopher, the only reality is my “I”, and the world exists only because this “I” exists. From these provisions, Berkeley also proved the existence of God.

David Hume argued that the source of both cognitive abilities and emotions and will are sensations. Ideas are formed when the mind makes copies of sensory impressions. This is how reflection impressions are formed. Hume illuminates the problem of the formation of complex ideas among themselves in the association of ideas. He identifies three principles of association of ideas: similarity between ideas, contiguity between them in time and space, and the principle of causality.

D. Hume paid important attention to the processes of studying forecasting the future based on the past. But Hume’s agnosticism manifested itself in the fact that the philosopher denied the knowability of the source of our sensations - is it God or matter, or our illusions? There is no answer to this. Hume asks the question: what sensations (impressions, reflections) provide us with the idea of substance? And he answers that such impressions cannot be found. This means that apparently there is no substance itself. The human spirit is a huge combination (association) of ideas.

Rationalism in the philosophy of modern times

Features of rationalism of the 17th century. associated with an orientation towards mathematics as an ideal scientific knowledge. From the orientation towards mathematics directly followed the basic position of rationalism that the source and criterion of truth cannot be experience, since sensory experience is unreliable, unstable, and changeable. Rationalists believed that, just as mathematical knowledge is derived and justified by rational deductive means, philosophical knowledge must also be derived from reason and justified by it.

At the origins of Western European rationalism is the philosophy of the French scientist and philosopher Rene Descartes(1596-1650), from which, according to Hegel, the promised land of modern philosophy begins and the foundations are laid deductive-rationalistic method of cognition. Descartes is also known as the author of research in various fields of knowledge: he laid the foundations of geometric optics, created analytical geometry, introduced the rectangular coordinate system, and put forward the idea of reflex.

R. Descartes was one of those thinkers who closely linked the development of scientific thinking with general philosophical principles. He emphasized that a new type of philosophy was needed that could help in the practical affairs of people. True philosophy must be single both in its theoretical part and in its method. Descartes explains this thought with the help of the image of a tree, the roots of which are philosophical metaphysics, the trunk is physics as part of philosophy, and the branched crown is all applied sciences, including ethics, medicine, applied mechanics, etc.

The basis of human knowledge lies philosophy, or metaphysics, as it was customary to call philosophy in those days. For Descartes it is obvious that the truth of the initial provisions of metaphysics will guarantee the truth of human knowledge in general. The problem is how to find a proposition whose truth is self-evident.

In his search, Descartes took the position skepticism or doubts about everything. His skepticism is methodological in nature, since Descartes needs radical skepticism only in order to arrive at an absolutely certain truth. Descartes' line of reasoning is as follows. Any statement about the world, about God and man can raise doubts. Only one position is undoubted: “Cogito ergo sum” - “I think, therefore I exist,” since the act of doubt in it means both the act of thinking and the act of existence.

So, the position “I think, therefore I exist” is the only position that, in principle, does not raise doubts, and is placed by Descartes as the basis of his philosophy. Herself philosophical system Descartes is a vivid example of the rationalistic method of cognition, since all philosophical statements are derived by him in a rational-deductive way from a single fundamental principle, from the thinking subject.

The proposition “I think, therefore I am” is a combination of two corresponding ideas: “I think” and “I exist.” From the position “I think” it follows that “I” is something thinking, something spiritual, or a soul in the terminology of R. Descartes. The soul is a kind of unextended essence or substance. A person's own soul is the first object of his knowledge. The soul contains ideas, some of which are acquired by a person during his life, while others are innate.

Descartes believes that the basic rational ideas of the soul, the main one of which is the idea of God, are not acquired, but congenital. And since man has the idea of God, the object of this idea exists.

Descartes' philosophy was named dualistic, since it postulates the existence of two substances - material, which has extension but does not have thinking, and spiritual, which has thinking, but does not have extension. These two substances, independent of each other, being a product of the activity of God, are united in a person who can know both God and the world created by him.

Descartes claims that the mind is able to extract from itself the highest ideas necessary and sufficient for understanding nature and guiding behavior. A person sees these ideas with “internal” vision (intellectual intuition) due to their distinctness and clarity. Using further a precisely formulated method and rules of logic, he deduces from these ideas all other knowledge.

In his Discourse on Method, Descartes formulated the basic rules to be followed to “lead your mind to the knowledge of truth.”

The first rule: accept as true that which is self-evident, is perceived clearly and distinctly and does not give rise to doubt.

Second rule: every complicated thing should be divided into simple components, reaching the self-evident things (rule of analysis).

Third rule: in knowledge one must move from simple, elementary things to more complex ones (the rule of synthesis).

The fourth rule requires completeness of enumeration, systematization of both the known and the knowable, in order to be sure that nothing is missed.

Thus, intuition and deduction from what is intuitively comprehended is the main path leading to the knowledge of everything possible. In his rationalistic methodology, R. Descartes proposes to go from the most general philosophical provisions to the more specific provisions of specific sciences, and from them to the most specific knowledge. We can say that the rationalistic method of R. Descartes is philosophical understanding mathematics methodology.

Descartes' program for building a system of knowledge resting on a single foundation was fully embodied in the philosophy of the Dutch thinker Benedict Spinoza(1632-1677). Main work B. Spinoza's “Ethics” is even structured in form as an example of Euclidean geometry: it first gives basic definitions (for example, the definitions of God), then axioms; after this, theorems are formulated and their (brief or detailed) proof is given, concerning the principles and rules of human behavior, understanding of the world and its knowledge.

Unlike the dualistic philosophy of R. Descartes, the philosophy of Spinoza has monistic character, being the doctrine of one and only, and absolutely divine, substance-nature, which is everything, just as everything is substance.

Containing the reason for its existence within itself, a substance has an infinite number of attributes, or essential properties. Substance is one, but the attributes, qualities that express its essence, and the ways in which it expresses its being are infinite. A person knows a substance through its two attributes - length And thinking,

The objective world surrounding a person is, according to Spinoza, certain states of a single substance, or its modes, those. specific items and phenomena that do not exist on their own, but only in a system of relationships to each other, i.e. ultimately to the substance itself.

Substance and its attributes constitute producing nature or naturo naturata, and modes - nature produced, or natura naturans. Nature acts simultaneously both as a substance, since it is a creative principle, and as modes, since it is a totality natural phenomena. Substance expresses the unity of the world, and modes, or states of substance, express its diversity. Unity and diversity are two sides of the same nature.

Within the framework of diversity, each thing, considered as a mode of substance, is both a body (the mode of the attribute of extension) and an idea corresponding to this body - the mode of the attribute of thinking. The most complex mode of substance is Human, to which corresponds an idea that thinks of itself and its body.

Having explored the nature of substance, Spinoza proceeds to investigate human cognitive activity. Your understanding of the relationship of knowledge to to the outside world he formulates as follows: “The order and connection of ideas are the same as the order and connection of things” (Ethics. Theorem 7. Part 2. M.-L., 1957. C41). This theorem, establishing the dependence of the “order and connection of ideas” on the “order and connection of things,” indicates the possibility of true adequate knowledge of the world.

In contrast to R. Descartes, who asserted the existence of innate ideas in humans, Spinoza categorically denies their existence. At the same time, he recognizes the innate ability to acquire knowledge. The task of man is to improve this innate ability to acquire knowledge. In his Treatise on the Purification of the Intellect, Spinoza distinguishes four ways of acquiring knowledge, which, in his opinion, exhaust all human cognitive activity. He analyzes each of these four methods of knowledge with the aim of establishing the only scientific method of research through which the very essence of things could be known.

Through the first method of cognition we obtain hearsay knowledge. Spinoza immediately discards this method, mentioning it only in order to exhaust all the ways in which a person acquires knowledge, and also because this method - knowledge by hearsay - is the only method of religion that refers to authority scripture and sacred tradition.

In the second way we acquire knowledge from disordered experience, those. experience that is not determined by reason and is called disordered because the observation is random. Spinoza limits this method of knowledge to everyday life. For true scientific research This method is not suitable because on its basis it is possible to understand only random signs and not the essence. Therefore, this method should be excluded.

The third way to acquire knowledge is in finding causes based on effects or deducing the essence of a thing from some general concept. This path of knowledge, being scientific, still does not provide internally reliable, corresponding to the object and strictly necessary knowledge, since the properties of a thing are not perceived directly through the essence.

The fourth way of cognition is cognition in which a thing is perceived only through her essence. This method of knowledge alone, which Spinoza calls intuitive, gives us, according to his teaching, infallible, adequate knowledge that strictly corresponds to the essence of a thing.

Spinoza's intuition is not mystical intuition, but rationalistic knowledge of the essence of a thing based on comprehension of the essence of substance.

Knowledge of substance and knowledge of modes are fundamentally different. If experience is essential in relation to modes, then in relation to substance and its attributes it is not essential.

So, Spinoza limited the cognitive capabilities of experience to the unimportant properties of things, while their essence can only be known in a rational way.

Despite the outwardly abstract nature of Spinoza's reasoning about substance, attributes and modes, his philosophy has a pronounced practical orientation. The doctrine of substance is also a doctrine of man, of his morality, of a wise perception of life.

"Freedom is a perceived necessity"- this is how B. Spinoza formulated the path of man to freedom. As a result, a person comes to a state where he does not cry or laugh, but understands the necessity and transient nature of the ups and downs of his life.

Great German philosopher and mathematician who discovered differential and integral calculus, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz(1646-1716) rejected both the dualistic interpretation of existence of R. Descartes and the monistic doctrine of substance of B. Spinoza. He contrasted them with a pluralistic concept of being as a collection of many substances - monad.

“A monad is nothing more than a simple substance that is part of complex ones: simple, which means it has no parts” (Occupation 4v..T.1.M.: Mysl, 1983.C13). Thus, substance, as the initial principle of all things, must have absolute simplicity and indivisibility, and therefore cannot be complex, since a complex substance would depend on simple ones; substance cannot be extended due to the infinite divisibility of space.

From the simplicity of monads follows the fact that they do not change in their internal determination under the influence of other monads. Each monad represents a kind of closed world, reflecting the entire world order. To overcome the isolation of monads, Leibniz introduces the principle of pre-established harmony, emanating from God, who ensures the internal order of the entire world of monads and turns each monad into a “living mirror of the universe.”

Leibniz distinguishes three types of monads according to the degree of their development:

Monads lower degree of development, which have only a passive ability of perception, form physical bodies, i.e. objects of inanimate nature;

Monads d ears, those with sensations and ideas constitute the flora and fauna;

Monad-spirits, endowed with consciousness, are at the highest stage of development. They define human nature.

Rationalism in Leibniz's teaching on monads was expressed in the fact that monads can only be comprehended by reason.

Equally rationalistic is theory of knowledge Leibniz, in which he attempted to combine rationalism and empiricism while maintaining the leading role of rationalism. He distinguishes two kinds of truths: “truths of reason” and “truths of fact.”

"Truths of Reason" represent innate ideas. But Leibniz, unlike Descartes, believes that innate ideas are not immediately given clearly and distinctly, but are in the intellect in an embryonic state and only gradually develop to full awareness. They are constructs of the mind and are subject to strict logical and mathematical rules of analysis, synthesis, and bringing them to unity. Therefore, a feature of the “truths of reason” is their universality and necessity, which, first of all, characterizes logical and mathematical knowledge.

"Truths of Fact" do not have necessity and universality. They are empirical and contingent in the sense that they cannot be deduced. Leibniz considers induction to be a method of finding “truths of fact”; to “get” them, Leibniz argues, it is enough to rely on the law of sufficient justification. He refers to the “truths of fact” as the laws of nature discovered by natural science. While recognizing the role of “truths of fact” in human cognition, Leibniz nevertheless accords “truths of reason” a higher status.

Rationalistic system G.V. Leibniz was the completion of the rationalist tendency in philosophy XVII V. and the predecessor of German classical philosophy.

The main representatives of rationalism in modern philosophy were Rene Descartes, Blaise Pascal, Baruch Spinoza and Gottfried Leibniz. Rationalism is closely related to the medieval tradition. Rationalism is focused on methodological and epistemological problems. Its representatives are mainly the greatest scientists of their time in the field of mathematics and physics. Representatives of rationalism are characterized by the construction of universal systems based on obvious principles, from which knowledge about the world as a whole was derived by reasoning. The French philosopher Rene Descartes (1596-1650) is rightfully considered the founder of rationalism in modern philosophy. Acquaintance with his works “Rules for the Guidance of the Mind”, “Discourse on Method”, “Reflections on New Philosophy” indicates that the question of how a person comprehends the truth and how he obtains knowledge about the world, R. Descartes decided on fundamentally different positions, than representatives of the philosophy of empiricism. Senses sometimes deceive, which means that sensory data cannot be accepted as the initial principle of philosophizing. Mathematical knowledge is not absolutely obvious either. They still require their proof. Knowledge must begin with the search for the beginning. And on this path one should discard prejudices and bury unfounded authorities. Everything must pass the test of reason, everything must be justified, even what we habitually trust. Having relied on reason, Descartes, in contrast to empiricism, considers the ascent from obvious general and simple ideas to complex ideas to be the optimal method of knowledge. In contrast to Bacon's induction, Descartes put forward deduction. As a model, he considered the progression of mathematical proof from axiom to theorem. But here rationalism was faced with the question of where the most general ideas come from, what is the beginning of knowledge, which should be characterized by clarity and self-evidence. According to Descartes, this principle is provided by intuition. Intuition is not the result of knowledge, but only its beginning. It is the starting point for deduction (from Latin - derivation) of one concept from another. The first principle constitutes the basis of the first judgment. And then it’s a matter of logical technique, which ensures movement from the concept through judgment to inference, to the discovery of the regularity of the object under study. Since deduction differs from intuition by its indirectness in deducing the truth, R. Descartes draws the researcher’s attention to the need to follow certain rules. The first rule guides us to consider what is obvious as true; the second requires dividing complex problems into simple ones; third, it involves thinking, moving from simple to complex; fourth, it requires taking into account all the stages of cognition passed through. It is enough to miss a single link, and the whole chain collapses, and the conclusion for which it was conceived becomes impossible. Descartes takes the individual act of thinking as the starting point of knowledge. Doubt itself is already a process of thought, and the subjectively experienced act of thinking is inseparable from the thinking being. “I doubt everything except that I exist.” But the proposition is absolutely undeniable: “I think, therefore I exist.” From the point of view of R. Descartes, the truth of this starting point of knowledge is guaranteed by God, who invested in man the natural light of reason. As for feelings, they let us down quite often. Therefore, feelings and imagination are just a tentative step of knowledge and nothing more. The underestimation of sensory cognition is also expressed in the fact that R. Descartes creates a new frame of reference for the implementation of cognition. For him, it is important to consider things not in themselves, but in relation to our intellect. The philosopher does not call for studying things as God created them, since the divine mechanism of creation is hidden and inaccessible. The task of human knowledge is to discover “...how those things that we perceive through the senses could have been created,” that is, to reconstruct these things mentally using deduction. This formulation assumes that knowledge should be directed not from being to truth, but from truth to being, “... since truth is the same as being” (Ibid. p. 383). Truth appears not as a correspondence of knowledge to being, but as a model for creating being corresponding to this truth. This position was methodologically heuristic. It did not so much bear the stamp of idealism as it opened up the possibility of experimentally creating a being that does not exist in the natural world. As the founder of rationalism, Descartes equalized all things in the world before the human intellect. He transferred the principles, or principles, of nature from the objective world to human mind. This made it possible to eliminate the natural inequality of things and apply quantitative characteristics and mathematical methods to their knowledge. Thus, the philosophy of R. Descartes served as the methodological basis for the mathematization of natural science and its modeling. Descartes' rationalistic method was developed in the philosophy of Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), although he was an opponent of R. Descartes on a number of issues. In his essay “Thoughts,” Blaise Pascal divides sciences according to their subject and the way of knowing it. One row includes such sciences as history, geography, jurisprudence, linguistics and... theology. Pascal considered these sciences “historical” because they deal with the facts of the continuity of generations. These sciences are dominated by authority. As for scientific techniques, the system of reasonable evidence, they are practically inapplicable. Another row includes geometry and arithmetic, physics and chemistry, architecture, medicine and music. These sciences discover and explore various truths, relying on feelings and reason, on experience and inference. The importance of authority in these sciences is minimal. In these sciences, the axiomatic-deductive method of cognition triumphs. With its help you can obtain truths that cannot be found in experience. The deductive method requires special skill and attention, defining and proving the premises in order to avoid any ambiguity and ambiguity. The principles are felt, and theorems are proven. Evidence is the essence of the axiomatic-deductive method. It presupposes the presence of “primary axiom terms” that save the mind from the evil infinity of reasons and consequences. These are space and time, movement, number, equality, etc., that is, those concepts to which the highest evidence belongs. At their core, these concepts are the product of Cartesian intuition. But unlike Descartes, Pascal clarifies: “We know the truth not only with our minds, but also with our hearts. The concept of truth is embedded in us.”

Reliable knowledge extends only to the sphere of that objective activity with which a person deals in his daily activities. The problem of cognition looks completely different outside of these everyday activities. Here, any solution to the problem of knowledge is impossible without the relationship between the infinite and the finite. Pascal thinks of infinity, in the spirit of Nicholas of Cusa, as God. Infinity is actual - it neither increases nor decreases; it exists, and it is unknowable. All claims to know this infinity are untenable, for “we have only partial truth and partial good.” The middle position of man between the finite and the infinite, between non-existence and being makes all his truths only relative, for “he only grasps the appearance of phenomena, being unable to know either their beginning or their end.” Absolute truth available only to God. Man, as a particle of nature, as a finite being, is unable to comprehend the infinite whole surrounding him. But the insignificance of man borders on his greatness. Man, as a “thinking reed,” is one of the weakest creations of nature. But this creation of nature, thanks to its thinking ability, becomes a “miracle” capable of embracing the entire Universe. Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) also made a certain contribution to rationalist methodology. In his philosophical treatise“Ethics” Spinoza calls for distinguishing between two classes of ideas. Some arise in our imagination, imagination and are associated with our feelings. Other ideas belong to our mind.

Sensory ideas are generated by “confused (vague) experience.” They are subjective, but not false, because they reflect the objective nature of things. But due to subjective perception, these ideas are inadequate in nature, and therefore partial truth cannot claim absolute reliability. The value of these ideas is that they allow us to state the fact of a phenomenon without revealing its essence. The essence is revealed in ideas, which are a part of the mind. The deductive mind grasps the essence “from the inside”, relying on its logical nature and the power of intuition. The interpenetration of intuition and deduction is manifested in general concepts, without which it is impossible to obtain rationally reliable knowledge. Intuition reveals the essence of things. From the essence it is already possible to deduce their properties. Ideas of the second class have a certain character, not only in their relation to the human mind, but also in their relation to the objective world. The reliability of ideas makes nature and the world knowable. This position can be defined as panlogism, as the absolutization of intuitive-analytical ideas and underestimation of sensory knowledge. The most general idea is that of actual infinity. Its clarity is intuitive. Without requiring any definitions, it gives rise to all others and forms the foundation of reliable knowledge. Starting from it, one can understand the essence of all nature, understand that nature is its own cause. Another step towards the development of rationalism was taken by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716), an encyclopedist and outstanding philosopher. If Descartes practically declared rationalism, then Leibniz analyzes and substantiates it. Descartes' "clarity and distinctness" suffered from subjectivist uncertainty. Leibniz removes this uncertainty by testing primary truths from the position logical law identity, as well as the logical law of contradiction. The resulting truths do not express everything that exists, but they make it possible to clarify, first of all, what is possible and consistent. Leibniz's rationalism did not ignore experience. The philosopher defines truths of experience as truths of fact. They are subject to scientific understanding based on the law sufficient reason. This law, from Leibniz's point of view, is the basis of the principle of causality. Reflecting on this law and identifying its difference from the laws of identity and contradiction, the author of “New Experiments on Human Understanding” noted the importance of studying the degree of probability of the truth of a fact, the nature of which is, as a rule, random. But no matter how great the value of the truth of a fact, it has a purely practical significance and is inferior to the truths of reason, the significance of which is incommensurable in comparison with random truths, the value of which is determined both by the law of sufficient reason and the law of sufficient justification. The undertaken historical and philosophical analysis indicates that the developed methodology in the philosophy of the New Age explained a lot, leaving open the question of the source of knowledge. Rationalists, like representatives of empiricism, considered an individual person to be the subject of knowledge, and general ideas are not given to an individual person in individual experience. For example, the concepts of matter, space, motion, causality, etc. are not formed on the basis of individual experience, but were developed by humanity in the process of all its historical practice. An individual person acquires these concepts—universal ideas—in ready-made form through language in childhood. These ideas precede individual experience and shape it.

Representatives of rationalism, not taking into account the factor social nature human cognition, they concluded that our mind already has innate ideas (R. Descartes). But how are “innate” ideas consistent with reality in the absence of their affinity? And rationalism accepts the postulate of the coincidence of ideas and things (B. Spinoza) or develops the doctrine of harmony pre-established by God (G. Leibniz). All this makes it necessary to consider ontological problems.

The founder of the rationalist position in epistemology and methodology of the New Age is rightfully considered eminent philosopher and mathematician Rene Descartes (1596-1650). His main philosophical works: “Principles of Philosophy”, “Discourses on Method” and “Rules for Guiding the Mind”.

The basis of knowledge, according to Descartes, should be doubt in everything that can be doubted. We have already encountered a similar idea in ancient skeptics, but for them doubt lay not only at the basis of knowledge, but was its goal. For Descartes, doubt is not a goal, but only a means of knowledge, its initial methodological principle. It is not comprehensive. He wrote that you can doubt everything, even the most obvious, but it is impossible to doubt the fact of doubt itself. Doubt is evidence of thought (as opposed to blind faith), and thinking, in turn, testifies to my own existence: “I think, therefore I exist.”

Along with the principle of initial doubt, Descartes put forward the concept of “innate ideas” inherent in a person from birth and not related to the content of experience. Descartes considered innate ideas, firstly, the concepts of God, being, number, duration, extension, etc. and, secondly, axioms and judgments such as “nothing has properties”, “nothing comes from nothing”, “every thing has a reason,” etc.

In his ontological views, Descartes is a duadist: he recognizes the existence of two substances (equal and mutually independent principles of the world) - corporeal (material) and spiritual. The attribute of the first of them is extension, and the second is thinking. Both substances, together with their attributes, are subject to knowledge, but there is also a first and highest substance that expresses one of the innate ideas - the substance of God, which generates and coordinates bodily and spiritual substances. Thus, Descartes' dualism turned out to be inconsistent. If in physics he expresses materialistic tendencies, then outside of it (in philosophy) he takes the position of theology.

In the theory of knowledge, Descartes acts as a consistent rationalist. He believes that one cannot trust the senses, as they lead to extreme subjectivity. The only reliable source of knowledge is reason, the highest manifestation of which is intuition: sensual (associated with human reflex activity) and intellectual (in Descartes it is associated with special attention to mathematical knowledge and the axiomatic method). He criticized induction as a method of cognition, believing that the task of cognition is to establish objective truth, and induction is not capable of doing this, since it proceeds from the given in particular cases and is based on sensory experience, which cannot but be subjective.

In contrast to Bacon, Descartes focused on the deductive method. Deduction (inference) – a transition from knowledge of the general to knowledge of the particular, that is, from knowledge about a class to knowledge about the parts and elements of this class. Descartes derived the basic rules of the deductive method: 1) clarity and distinctness of cognition, the absence of any elements in the process of cognition, questionable; 2) dividing each subject under study into the maximum number of structures; 3) thinking according to the principle: “knowledge should have the simplest foundations and move from them to more complex and perfect ones”; 4) completeness of knowledge, which requires not to miss anything essential.

The followers of Descartes' rationalism were B. Spinoza and G. Leibniz. Benedict (Baruch) Spinoza (1632-1677) - Dutch thinker, believed that there is matter that is the cause of itself. It has all the necessary properties for this - thinking and extension, which are the two most important attributes of a single substance, which Spinoza called Nature, or God. In other words, God and nature, he believes, are essentially the same thing. In understanding nature, Spinoza remained in the position of mechanism. The root of all prejudices, including religious ones, is ignorance and the attribution of human qualities (in particular, purposes) to natural things. Elements of dialectics appeared in the doctrine of the interdependence of freedom and necessity (“freedom is a perceived necessity”). Gottfried Leibniz (1646-1716) - German philosopher and mathematician, defended rationalism from the position of objective idealism. Believed that the world consists of the smallest creatures generated by God monads – spiritual units with activity, which he divided into “lower” (in inanimate nature and plants), “average” (in animals), “higher” (in humans). The unity and coherence of the monads is the result of the harmony pre-established by God. Elements of dialectics are contained in Leibniz’s position on the hierarchical relationship of monads of various levels, the possibility of their transition from more low level to a higher one, which is actually development.

Representatives of both empiricism (sensualism) and rationalism in epistemology undoubtedly made a huge contribution to the development of scientific methodology. It is impossible, however, not to note some limitations and one-sidedness in the approach to the method of cognition. In reality, both the experienced (sensual) and rational cognition, as well as the inductive and deductive methods based on them, are dialectically interconnected. In the process of cognition they are inseparable. Thought proceeds from knowledge of the concrete, sensory data, to the general, the identification of which is possible only with the help of abstract thinking. In the process of generalization and systematization of specific facts, knowledge about the essence, patterns of development arises, and hypotheses are formed. And they, in turn, are the common basis that forms knowledge about new specific, individual processes and facts.