Rationalism of Augustine, the Islamic philosopher Avicenna and Jewish philosopher and theologian Maimonides. One notable event in the Western timeline was the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas who attempted to merge Greek rationalism and Christian revelation in the thirteenth-century. Early modern rationalism has its roots in the 17th-century Dutch Republic, with some notable intellectual representatives like Hugo Grotius, René Descartes, and Baruch Spinoza. Descartes was the first of the modern rationalists and has been dubbed the 'Father of Modern Philosophy.' Much subsequent Western philosophy is a response to his writings, which are studied closely to this day. Descartes thought that only knowledge
Vincent Descombes the University of Chicago. Descombes was a member of the French libertarian socialist group Socialisme ou Barbarie. Vincent Descombes Vincent Descombes (; born 1943) is a French philosopher. His major work has been in the philosophy of language and philosophy of mind. Descombes is particularly noted for a lengthy critique in two volumes of the project he calls cognitivism, and which is, roughly, the view current in philosophy of mind that mental and psychological facts can ultimately be treated as, or reduced to, physical facts about the brain. Descombes has also written an introduction to modern French philosophy ("Le même