RATIONALISM (Lat. rationalis, from ratio, reason). A term employed in philosophy and theology to denote a system in which the reason is supreme. In theology it is contrasted with supernaturalism, and is used to describe a move ment of thought, which had its important repre sentatives in Germany in the last half of the eighteenth century, but was to be found in Eng land and elsewhere in the previous century in the earlier stages of development. According to one of its recent historians, Kahnis, it "makes the educated reason of the times the standard of all religious truth, and the material principle of this reason is virtue. which demands and sustains be lief in God and immortality." ]n philosophy, the term is used to denote the doctrine that reason is an independent source of knowledge, distinct from sense-perception and having a higher authority. In this sense it is opposed to sensationalism (q.v.). It is more widely used, however, for the view opposed to empiricism (q.v.) that in philoso
phy certain elementary concepts are to be sought, and all the remaining content of philosophy de ductively derived from them. This view was first explicitly stated by Descartes, developed by Spin oza and Leibnitz, and formulated by Wolff. Kant endeavored to transform rationalism by showing how reason was implicit in experience; and Hegel revived it in a transformed sense with the construction of experience itself as a system of reason. Consult Lecky, History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism in Europe (London, 1S65) ; Tulloch, Rational Theology and Christian Philosophy in. England in the Seven teenth Century (ib., 1872) ; Pfleiderer, The Evo lution of Rationalistic Theology since Kant (Eng. trans., ib., 1892) ; Hagenbach, German Rational ism (Eng,. trans., Edinburgh, 1865). See also GERMAN THEOLOGY; KNOWLEDGE, THEORY OF.