European Philosophers

The areas that I chose to focus on were rationalism and empiricism. Rationalism as we all know is the belief that all knowledge can be attained through logic and reason, whereas Empiricism is the theory that all knowledge or ideas can be attained through experience. When it comes to European influences on American Philosophy, we can see that Calvinism as well as the Enlightenment has affected this branch of Philosophy. We also cannot forget one of the biggest founders of rationalism, the French philosopher, Rene Decartes. It was through his Meditations that he examined the source of knowledge, errors and the faculties of understanding and knowledge through the very method of rationalism, as he uses different methods of reason to answer his questions. We also have the Dutch philosopher, Baruch Spinoza who believed God was nature, and brought about the view of pantheism. One of the last major European influences on rationalism, was the German philosopher Goffried Leibniz, who believed that we lived in the best of all possible worlds. Whereas when we look at empiricism, we see European influences mostly from the English philosopher John Locke who rejected the theory of innateness, which further emphasizes the necessity of experiencing something before you can attain knowledge about it.