Abstract: The author of the article raises a question about the evidence of actual proximity between creativity of a philosopher and rationalism. To answer this question, it is suggested that we should be guided by the same gnoseological and methodological values that were followed by the founders of the classical philosophical rationalism. The author keeps to the idea that the object of thought is the experience as understood in the broad sense of the word , therefore it is the empirical projection of thought that undertakes an effort to find the criteria of correspondence of thought to these values. Based on that, the author offers a definition of experience and describes the main values of rationalism. The results of the research establish the relationship between the structure of thought and the structure of experience. These provisions are the criteria of rationalistic thought we have been searching for.