Rationalism, Sophistry, Idealism and Marxism: Core Philosophical Ideas

16. Rationalism: Rationalism is basically an epistemological doctrine which holds that part of knowledge is innate, making it possible to analyze the world and ourselves. It developed in the seventeenth century and affirmed the supremacy of reason over sensory experience, considering reason the true and most reliable source of cognitive potential. Descartes is considered the initiator of this doctrine, and Spinoza, Malebranche and Leibniz are its greatest representatives. The rationalists sought to build a rigorous and comprehensive system of absolute truths, with absolute certainty, that would bring order to knowledge. Their model of evidence was similar to mathematics, based on deductive principles from rational, intuitively evident knowledge. This was the ideal of the unification of knowledge: they aimed to develop an admirable science that would encompass all knowledge within a general philosophical vision, always guided by pure reason. Following the Platonic tradition, the rationalists held that the soul contains certain innate ideas or principles on which the truths sought are founded. The human mind is not an empty receptacle or a "tabula rasa" as the empiricists defended, but naturally possesses a certain number of innate ideas from which knowledge can be deductively attained. Finally, it should be emphasized that rationalists gave great importance to the search for a foundation and to alternative methods of knowledge that, like mathematics and geometry, would ensure reaching the truth and avoiding errors.
17. Sophistry: The sophists were itinerant teachers in classical Greece who appeared mainly in the fifth century BC in democratic Athens, and their great knowledge was largely developed in the colonies. The sophistic movement was the first philosophical current in which the question arose of how to gain access to knowledge as a criterion of truth, which is what we understand as thought and the behavior and conventions of our society originated from it. The sophists were professionals of knowledge who organized and charged considerable fees for their courses. Their appearance marked the first authentic cultural revolution in the Greek world, with systematic courses in rhetoric, politics, law, morality, and technical-pedagogical methods for their teaching. The sophists emphasized persuasive expression for everything, and rhetoric as an art enabled their disciples to achieve success in life, especially in public life. Although at first the sophists were recognized for their teachings, they progressively became an education aimed at developing political abilities. Their skepticism toward absolute truth and moral strength aroused criticism, especially from Socrates, and later from Plato and Aristotle. Sophistic thought led to skepticism (the claim that absolute truth is impossible to know) regarding knowledge, relativism (truth is not absolute) and conventionalism regarding morality. As a consequence, the word "sophist" acquired a derogatory meaning, like sophistry in modern terms, which can define someone as cunning and deceptive, or as false argumentation or reasoning. There were many important sophists, although the most important were Protagoras and Gorgias, and to a lesser extent Hippias, Prodicus and Euthydemus.

16. Rationalism: Rationalism is basically an epistemological doctrine which holds that part of knowledge is innate, making it possible to analyze the world and ourselves. It developed in the seventeenth century and affirmed the supremacy of reason over sensory experience, considering reason the true and most reliable source of cognitive potential. Descartes is considered the initiator of this doctrine, and Spinoza, Malebranche and Leibniz are its greatest representatives. The rationalists sought to build a rigorous and comprehensive system of absolute truths, with absolute certainty, that would bring order to knowledge. Their model of evidence was similar to mathematics, based on deductive principles from rational, intuitively evident knowledge. This was the ideal of the unification of knowledge: they aimed to develop an admirable science that would encompass all knowledge within a general philosophical vision, always guided by pure reason. Following the Platonic tradition, the rationalists held that the soul contains certain innate ideas or principles on which the truths sought are founded. The human mind is not an empty receptacle or a "tabula rasa" as the empiricists defended, but naturally possesses a certain number of innate ideas from which knowledge can be deductively attained. Finally, it should be emphasized that rationalists gave great importance to the search for a foundation and to alternative methods of knowledge that, like mathematics and geometry, would ensure reaching the truth and avoiding errors.
17. Sophistry: The sophists were itinerant teachers in classical Greece who appeared mainly in the fifth century BC in democratic Athens, and their great knowledge was largely developed in the colonies. The sophistic movement was the first philosophical current in which the question arose of how to gain access to knowledge as a criterion of truth, which is what we understand as thought and the behavior and conventions of our society originated from it. The sophists were professionals of knowledge who organized and charged considerable fees for their courses. Their appearance marked the first authentic cultural revolution in the Greek world, with systematic courses in rhetoric, politics, law, morality, and technical-pedagogical methods for their teaching. The sophists emphasized persuasive expression for everything, and rhetoric as an art enabled their disciples to achieve success in life, especially in public life. Although at first the sophists were recognized for their teachings, they progressively became an education aimed at developing political abilities. Their skepticism toward absolute truth and moral strength aroused criticism, especially from Socrates, and later from Plato and Aristotle. Sophistic thought led to skepticism (the claim that absolute truth is impossible to know) regarding knowledge, relativism (truth is not absolute) and conventionalism regarding morality. As a consequence, the word "sophist" acquired a derogatory meaning, like sophistry in modern terms, which can define someone as cunning and deceptive, or as false argumentation or reasoning. There were many important sophists, although the most important were Protagoras and Gorgias, and to a lesser extent Hippias, Prodicus and Euthydemus.

9. Idealism: Idealism is a doctrine of knowledge that holds that the world of reality is accessible only through reason and analysis. It is a position opposed to realism: while realism argues that there exist things and realities independent of the knowing subject, idealism holds that the external reality is not knowable in itself, and that the object of knowledge is constructed or formed by cognitive activity. In a sense, in Plato and idealism there is something in common: both hold that there is a true reality, although ideas remain outside consciousness. Properly speaking, idealism has its origin in Descartes in the seventeenth century, and its affirmation of consciousness as the criterion of truth means that truth is determined by features of clear and evident ideas. This subjectivist affirmation of the criterion of truth was taken up in the eighteenth century by Kant in the form of transcendental idealism. For Kant, we know only the phenomenon, that is, the appearance of things within the given forms of space and time, but we do not know the noumenon, the thing in itself, because we do not have sensible intuitions beyond the phenomena. Our knowledge is therefore limited to the world of sensible intuitions, and we have no knowledge of things as they are in themselves. German idealism was finally named after the philosophical current represented by Fichte (1762-1814), Schelling (1775-1854) and Hegel (1770-1831). The latter, who gave the final philosophical formulation of idealism, held that reason is not merely a means of understanding everything, but that what is rational is real and what is real is rational. Hence his famous assertion that all that is rational is real, and all that is real is rational.
10. Marxism: If the first conception is well known as Marxism, it is also the first that from the dialectical point of view became a revolutionary doctrine, a methodological approach and even a type of political movement, also known as scientific socialism. Marxism developed in the context of the revolutionary and scientific movements and of the workers' struggles of the nineteenth century. Its name derives from the philosopher Karl Marx. In its orthodox formulation, which Engels, Marx's collaborator, also contributed to, the analysis consisted of the history of economic and social relations of unfair exploitation, which change dialectically throughout history, giving form to the oppression of the weak. Oppression of this kind has always been hidden under the appearance of a structure of ideology, an ideology that presents the world in a way that disguises the real relations of unfair domination and justifies them. In these situations, the weak have always lived in a society that produces alienation and submission to the owners of the means of production. The last form of this bourgeois society, dual and contradictory, is destined to fail irreversibly. Workers, when they become aware of their situation, mobilize and, victorious in the revolution, will determine the advent of a future of equality without differences of new social classes. A society without classes can only be reached through a transitional stage of the proletariat called the dictatorship of the proletariat. In an ontological sense, dialectical Marxism is careful not to be mechanistic as in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It takes care to present the dialectic as an internal dynamic of reality that unfolds not only in space, but also in time; nature, history and thought evolve as a complex process. The simple formulation of the dialectic (Diamat) is due to Engels and was influenced by the advances of chemistry, biology (the discovery of the cell, the transformation of energy, Darwin's theory of evolution). Marxism had its first major influence on the social and political movements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and its political realization took the form of the former USSR.