Basic Ideas of Rationalism and Empiricism

An open textbook that puts the rationalists and the empiricists side by side: Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz against Locke, Berkeley and Hume, ending with Kant. Primary texts come with short introductions and study questions.

Walter Ott and Alex Dunn

Hume woke Kant from his dogmatic slumber, and this is Kant's answer: a short guide to how reason and experience work together. The clearest way to see how he tried to settle the rationalism versus empiricism debate.

Immanuel Kant

Where does the textbook story of rationalists against empiricists come from? This paper shows how Kant invented that way of telling the history of modern philosophy.

Alberto Vanzo

An original take on the old debate: Ishikawa rereads empiricism, rationalism and Kant's synthesis through the language of quantum mechanics.

Shiro Ishikawa