John Locke and Rene Descartes are both one of the first modern philosophers. They both enlightened us with their superior work in the 17th century. Descartes and Locke tried to find the answers to similar questions in “epistemology and metaphysics”. Both of these topics included questions such as: “What is knowledge?” Is there certainty in knowledge? What roles do the mind and body play in the acquisition of knowledge? Although they were both trying to find answers to the same questions, the answers to those questions were not the same. In this article, I will compare and contrast the philosophies of Descartes and Locke. .First I will explain some similarities and then I will explain the differences between their theories on rationalism and empiricism. In a nutshell, I will conclude that they are both two different philosophers with two different explanations. Locke and Descartes were two different philosophers, but they also had some similarities. Locke had written an essay “Concerning Human Understanding”. In his essay he takes a lot of information from Descartes and attempts to give his own explanation using Descartes' theory. Locke explains IDEA in his essay and derives this very term from Descartes. According to Locke, an idea is that which "the mind perceives in itself, or is the immediate object of perception, thought, or understanding." Likewise, Descartes explains this term from Dhillon 2 in exactly the same way. Descartes’ definition of idea is “anything that is immediately perceived by the mind.” These two philosophers believe in the existence of God... middle of paper ......f self through the continuity of consciousness. According to Descartes, the self is the only thinking soul while, according to Locke, the self is both the body and the soul. In this article, I have tried to explain the similarities and differences between the philosophies of Locke and Descartes. In my opinion, I found that the similarities did not have a significant impact on the judgment of their philosophical theories. The differences helped me better understand their philosophies. Both philosophers present us with a modern theory of knowledge and abandon older traditions that were skeptical in their approach. To summarize as a whole, this article explains to us about self-ideas, innate ideas and knowledge. Even though they had two distinct explanations for these theories, they still took each person's perception into account when trying to reach the best possible conclusion..