In the area of epistemology there were essentially two opposing schools.
While it is probably an oversimplification, in an Introduction to Philosophy class epistemological viewpoints are categorized into these two schools: rationalism and empiricism.
In the field of rationalism, what has been called "The European Rationalists" include Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz.
Conversely, the British Empiricists are Locke, Berkeley and Hume.
The rationalists argued that all knowledge is innate or "apriori" meaning prior to experience.
The empiricists argued that all knowledge is learned or "aposteriori" or a result of experience.
Ultimately these two schools were brought together in the thought of Immanuel Kant.
The work of Rene Descartes has been previously addressed so we now turn to a consideration of the work of the other two rationalists, Spinoza and Leibniz.
Baruch Spinoza was born in 1632 in Amsterdam. He was the son of Portuguese Jews and was educated in the Jewish community. However, he rebelled against Judaism's teachings and was consequently excommunicated.
Spinoza was fortunately a loner and lived a very solitary life.
He turned down the academic opportunities which came his way and he became a grinder of lenses for eyeglasses, telescopes and microscopes.
However it is assumed that Spinoza died at the age of 44 as a result of the dust from the lens grinding which aggravated what appears to have been an already existent lung ailment.
His most famous work was entitled, "Ethics" which he published in 1677. In addition, he made major contributions to Euclidean geometry and proceeded to do philosophy and ethics utilizing the method of deductive logic.
Using this approach Spinoza, attempted to establish the entire composition of reality.
Interestingly, prior to his death, Spinoza encountered Leibniz, another of the rationalists.
Jointly these two rationalists who faced the British empiricists, produced a great system of thought.
Descartes defined the terms of rationalism while Spinoza and Leibniz found the agenda. Descartes preserved the self and produced God.
The world created by the application of the procedure of the rationalists was one of a self-evident system.
Spinoza and Leibniz took the work of Descartes and determined what the world is actually like and they concluded that the external world is different from what it appears to be.
Though Spinoza and Leibniz share this common conviction they also differ from one another in that Spinoza determined that the world is a unitary world, that the world is extended and that the world is actually mental. On the other hand, Leibniz determined that the world is a real world that consists of infinity of things (monads) and that the world is only the by-product of the real world.
