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Did Plato use empiricism?
Plato, and to a lesser extent Aristotle, were both rationalists. But Aristotle’s successors in the ancient Greek schools of Stoicism and Epicureanism advanced an explicitly empiricist account of the formation of human concepts. The empiricism of the Epicureans, however, was more pronounced and consistent.
Was Plato an idealist or rationalist?
Plato was an idealist, and so was pretty much every philosopher after the Pre-Socratics until the materialism of Karl Marx and modernism. Plato believed the humans were born knowing everything but forgot in in infancy, so learning was just being reminded about the knowledge that was already in your mind.
Are Plato and Descartes rationalists?
A rationalist, in the Platonic tradition of innate ideas, Descartes believed that knowledge derives from ideas of the intellect, not from the senses. His argument for innate ideas involves his elimination of the possibility that clear and distinct ideas can be gained either through experience or imagination.
Which philosopher is a rationalist?
The first philosophers who are today referred to as having been rationalists include Descartes (1596-1650), Leibniz (1646-1716), and Spinoza (1632-1677). These thinkers thought they were defending a form of rational thought in the form of a science against the older school of thought known as scholasticism.
How is Plato a rationalist?
Plato is an example of a rationalist. He says that sense experience fails to provide us with any guarantee that what we experience is, in fact, true. The information we get by relying on sense experience is constantly changing and often unreliable.
Who is an empiricist philosopher?
In the 17th and 18th Century, the members of the British Empiricism school John Locke, George Berkeley and David Hume were the primary exponents of Empiricism. They vigorously defended Empiricism against the Rationalism of Descartes, Leibniz and Spinoza.
What is Plato theory of idealism?
Platonic idealism usually refers to Plato’s theory of forms or doctrine of ideas. It holds that only ideas encapsulate the true and essential nature of things, in a way that the physical form cannot. We recognize a tree, for instance, even though its physical form may be most untree-like.