Abstract

Modern, or continental, rationalism refers to the works of the seventeenth‐century philosophers René Descartes, Baruch Spinoza, and Gottfried Leibniz. While there is much to mark each philosopher off from the others, there are nevertheless several shared fundamental assumptions that warrant the common title of “rationalist.” Each philosopher believed that mathematics and geometry were appropriate models on which to base philosophical methodology. Each, whilst critical of founding knowledge on mere faith – which they believed could only lead to skepticism – nevertheless relied on theological arguments at various points in their philosophies. All three philosophers share a distrust of the notion that sensation, emotion (passion), and the body are capable of providing knowledge. Reason alone, on all three philosophers' accounts, is the a priori faculty which can provide secure foundations for human knowledge. It is Descartes' philosophy that has received most critical attention from feminist theorists. Spinoza has received less attention and Leibniz is all but ignored. At the end of this article, some attempt will be made to explain this uneven treatment of the modern rationalists.