Rationalism

Undergraduate

holds that reason is the main source of human knowledge, and it has a long history extending from the Pre-Socratics and Plato to the present. This course examines texts and thinkers from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, such as Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, and others. Topics may include themes and problems such as: the theory of ideas, the question of God's existence and nature, the nature of mind and body, the distinction between primary and secondary qualities, causation, induction, personal identity, and human agency.