He definitely thinks there’s a substantive difference: if reason is a sense, and all our knowledge comes from the senses (including reason) then all our knowledge is a posteriori. Rejecting the mechanism of a priori knowledge acquisition is rejecting rationalism (regardless of how the word ‘rational’ mutates in the mean time).
Other: I would tend to regard our reason as a sense.
So that’s the mysterious common sense people talk about!
Surely you should just substitute in “our other senses”?
I think of rationalism (in this sense) as thinking of reason as more distinct from (say) vision than I think of it as.
Other for basically the same reason as this, though I never thought of it in those words.
Then you’re an empiricist.
I would say it’s more like novalis thinks there is no substantive distinction between empiricism and rationalism.
He definitely thinks there’s a substantive difference: if reason is a sense, and all our knowledge comes from the senses (including reason) then all our knowledge is a posteriori. Rejecting the mechanism of a priori knowledge acquisition is rejecting rationalism (regardless of how the word ‘rational’ mutates in the mean time).