René Descartes' Rationalism: the immense human ability to exercise one's  reason - "Cogito ergo sum". The three types of ideas: innate, adventitious and facticious (of the imagination).  

The development of rationalism in Europe: Leibniz's optimistic world vision; Spinosa's mechanistic view of the universe.

John Locke's empiricism: the importance of sensory relationship in the act of knowledge. The denial of innate ideas and the notion of human intellect as a "tabula rasa" where data from experiences (contact with surrounding world) will be gradually recorded and only afterwards organised by reason in primary and secondary ideas. 

David Hume's and George Berkeley's contributions to empiricism.