One of the problems for the traditional ‘Rationalists and Empiricists’ story of early modern philosophy is that it is surprisingly difficult to define ‘rationalism’ and ’empiricism’ appropriately (see here for a previous discussion). One traditional way of drawing the distinction, derived from Locke, is over the existence of innate ideas....

Leibniz’s philosophical system The System reflects an overarching commitment to the idea that there is a rational order to the universe that can be grasped by human minds. This commitment is manifest both in his more general epistemological and metaphysical views on display in works like the Monadology and in...

  1. The crucial importance of reason. In 1957, when Atlas Shrugged was published, it was still radical to argue that the economy is moved forward by inventors and thinkers and people with ideas, rather than the brute muscle of unionized factory workers (which is basically the Marxist view). Today,...