rationalism

UK/ˈɹæʃ(ə)nəlɪzəm/US/ˈɹæʃ(ə)nəlɪzəm/

nounC1Very rare — outside the 30,000 commonest English words, so you will meet it in writing rather than in speechmostly written

Rationalism is the view that reason rather than faith should guide us. Argue for rationalism.

In philosophy it means something narrower, that knowledge comes from reason rather than the senses. Rationalism in ordinary use is simply a preference for evidence over authority.

Definitions of rationalism

1nounrationalismThe view that reason rather than faith should guide us.C1
“Rationalism was the whole spirit of the eighteenth century.”

rationalism is a view.

Where it comes from

From rational + -ism.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

rationalism in the wild

More formally, rationalism is defined as a methodology or a theory "in which the criterion of truth is not sensory but intellectual and deductive".
Rationalism
In a major philosophical debate during the Enlightenment, rationalism (sometimes here equated with innatism) was opposed to empiricism.
Rationalism
The central technical concept in the application of critical rationalism to science is falsifiability.
Critical rationalism
Moral rationalism, also called ethical rationalism, is a view in meta-ethics (specifically the epistemology of ethics) according to which moral principles are knowable a priori, by reason alone.
Moral rationalism
Some prominent figures in the history of philosophy who have defended moral rationalism are Plato and Immanuel Kant.
Moral rationalism

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

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