John Locke and René Descartes are both one of the first modern philosophers. Both enlightened us with their superior work in the seventeenth century. Both Descartes and Locke tried to find 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 role 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 these questions were not the same. In this article I will compare and contrast the philosophies of Descartes and Locke. .First of all I will explain some similarities, then I will explain the differences between their theories on rationalism and empiricism. Simply put, I will conclude that both are two different philosophers with two different explanations. Locke and Descartes were two different philosophers, however they also had some similarities. Locke had written an essay “Concerning Human Understanding”. In his essay he took a lot of information from Descartes and tried to give his own explanation using Descartes' theory. Locke explains IDEA in his essay and derives this 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 Dhillon 2 in exactly the same way. Descartes' definition of an idea is "everything that is immediately perceived by the mind." Both of these philosophers believe in the existence of God… in the middle of the paper… of the 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 Locke's philosophy and that of Descartes. In my opinion I found that the similarities did not have a significant impact in judging 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 other's perceptions into account while trying to come to the best possible conclusion.