In his famous treatise "Theory of Knowledge"the German philosopher J. Hessen wrote:
"The history of philosophy has a second attempt to mediate between rationalism and empiricism: apriorism. This last one also considers the experience and thought as sources of knowledge. But apriorism defines the relationship between experience and thought in a sense directly opposed to intellectualism. As the name apriorism says, our knowledge has, in this sense of direction, elements a priori, independent of experience. This was also the view of rationalism. But as this one considered a priori factors as contents, as perfect concepts for apriorism these factors are of a formal nature. They are not content, but forms of knowledge. These forrms receive the contents from the experience, and in this apriorism separates from rationalism and approaches to empiricism"(J.Hessen, Theory of Knowledge, Espasa Calpe Argentina, Buenos Aires-Mexico, Third Edition, 1944, p. 52 , as highlighted in bold is placed by us).
Hessen is wrong, like the generality of specialists in epistemology. There is no distinction between nativist rationalism and apriorism to the extent that the last is a modality of the second: the theory that man at birth already has innate ideas (nativism) is a substantial apriorism. There is no distinction between empiricism and formal apriorism to the extent that the first is incorporated in the second: almost all empiricists are formal apriorists since argue that there are formal structures a priori as the organs of sense and reason but destitute of contents.
Kant's theory is a substantial apriorism, since the ideas or concepts of necessity, unity, plurality, triangle, circle, numbers one, two, three, etc. are innate, and exist in sensitivity (shapes and numbers) as is in the understanding a priori (categories: unity, plurality, necessity, divisibility, etc.). And it is a rationalism because holds that reason, in its lowest form of understanding, is the main, but not exclusive, constructor of knowledge.
Apriorism has his contrary in aposteriorism: both they belong to the genus «temporalizre». It is not opposed to rationalism or empiricism: both of these ones belong to the genus «origin of knowledge». Hessen missed, the same as Kant, a true dialectical thinking.
www.filosofar.blogs.sapo.pt
f.limpo.queiroz@sapo.pt
© (Copyright to Francisco Limpo de Faria Queiroz)
In the Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy of Simon Blackburn the definition of rationalism is truncated, ignores the ontological rationalism of Stoicists and of Hegel:
«Rationalism. Any philosophy magnifying the role played by unaided reason in the acquisition and justification of knowledge. The preference for reason over sense experience began with the Eleatics and played a central role in Platonism. ( ) The continental rationalists, notably Descartes, Leibniz and Spinoza are frequently contrasted with the British empiricists (Locke, Berkeley and Hume), but such oppositions usually oversimplify a more complex picture. ( ) The term rationalist is also used more broadly for any anti-clerical, anti-authoritarian humanism, but it is unfortunate that it is empiricists such as Hume who are in this other sense rationalists.» (Simon Blackburn, Dictionary of Philosophy, Oxford, Pages 308; the bold is put by me).
What about Hegel, mr. Blackburn? In this article about rationalism, there are no references to the German philosopher Hegel as a rationalist, an ontological rationalist.
In the article about Hegel, this philosopher is not classified as a rationalist and there is only this reference to reason:
« Hegel requires a rational state to meet very stringent conditions, including the consent of the rational conscience of its members.» (Simon Blackburn, Dictionary of Philosophy, Oxford, Pages 161-162).
It seems that Simon Blackburn does not understand the theory of Hegel who identified God with the universal reason, independent and anterior to matter and humanity. Many teachers of philosophy, as well as Blackburn, ignore this fundamental characteristic of Hegel´ s doctrine. The doctrine of Hegel derivates, under this feature, from stoicism with his notion of an «universal reason» which configures destiny.
We propose a better definition of rationalism than Blackburn:
Rationalism is the theory which sustains the prevalence of reason on knowledge - the ideas and concepts of human reason are not merely copies of senses and empirical datas, but are modelled by reason, the thinking faculty of ordination and abstraction- or the prevalence of reason on material nature and life and human history life, development of nature and humanity obey to an universal reason, whether this reason is God, or Destiny or Natural cosmic order.
© (Direitos de autor para Francisco Limpo de Faria Queiroz)
Livraria online de Filosofia e Astrologia Histórica