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Where to start studying rationalism? I already have a history with philosophy for a few years, I've read most of Plato's dialogues and some books by Aristotle (metaphysics, the republic, Nicomachean ethics, etc...), I would now turn to some Roman philosophers, but I recently got hooked on rationalism, solipsism and this dispute against empiricism. I already know what rationalism is about, it preaches that reason is above the senses and that human beings will only achieve complete knowledge if they think about their surroundings in a rational way. Given my situation, which books would be interesting for my initiation in my studies about philosophical rationalism? which author do you recommend me to start? or if you would recommend something before, I would be grateful for your help.

>>33390 I'm actually in a situation similar to yours, as I'm researching rationalist methods for my graduate thesis. Sadly, I'm still in the process of digging such titles up, but the names most consistently popping up in this discussion are Leibniz (and his supposed "mantle-bearer" Christian Wolff), Descartes, Spinoza, Kant, and later on we might even say that - as a result of Kant's "Copernican Revolution" within Philosophy - the rationalist torch (in it's "advanced" form) was carried later on by Hegel and Husserl, both of whom derived - as far as I've gathered - from Goethe, and both of whom can be seen as the founders of the Phenomenologist school(s). But as far as the traditional rationalist method/school/orientation is concerned, Leibniz and Descartes would probably take the cake. It's sometimes said that Leibniz was the uncredited, forgotten genius of rationalism who, despite some people's interpretations, wasn't the sort of naive rationalist people unduly made him out to be, so we might as well start with him, to give him his due credit. Leibniz is a tricky author in the sense that most of his philosophical insights were never published, but were rather presented in his letters and personal writings that ended up being published posthumously. The three most coherent and accessible titles from him were "Theodicy" (discussing the problem of God and the "best of possible worlds" posit), "Monadology" (discussing the ultimate mental atoms of our world, monads) and "New Essays on Human Understanding" (a dialogue-format debate between Leibniz and Locke). Then there are all sorts of compilations for his separate, smaller treaties, articles, writings and letters, but these wary greatly from editor to editor. I personally haven't even touched his Theodicy, because I think I already have the general idea of it, and don't need any more convincing of his idea that we are living in the best of all possible worlds. In case you want an overview, George MacDonald Ross's book "Leibniz" is a great way to start (only about ~130 pages or so). But in case you want a move exhaustive exploration, so far I've enjoyed Leroy E. Loemker's "Philosophical Papers and Letters" work quite alot (even if all the mathematical stuff dealing with the Calculus, for instance, flies right over my head). I've also skimmed through Nicholas Jolley's "The Cambridge Companion to Leibniz", and although I didn't manage to finish it years back when I first picked it, I must say that it left an overwhelmingly positive impression upon me - the scope and depth were quite something, as I recall. Descartes is a guy whose works I sadly haven't been acquinted with all that well, apart from some necessary reading materials we had for a course back in College, but his "Discourse on the Method" is a must-read (not necessarily for his (imo somewhat un)convincing skepticism converning every possible thing that *might* go wrong in our/his foundationalist search for the ultimate ground level from which to conduct our rational investigations of existence in general, but for the rationalist methodological approach itself laid open in it. It also pointed towards the categorical substance dualism between extended and unextended substances (or, what is more commonly known as the mind-body -problem), which paved the way for basically all the rest of the Western advances in Philosophy. The other two major works by him were "Meditations on First Philosophy" and "Principles of Philosophy", but, like I said, I am not very well acquainted with his actual works, so I'm not much of a help beyond this point, despite knowing his importance to the Western philosophical canon, but that's mostly just my reluctant stance toward substance dualism. As the third wheel of rationalism, we have Spinoza and his most relevant, central book "Ethics", but honestly I have no idea what is contained within it, so I won't even try. Hope this helps.