 Gödel’s philosophical views can be broadly characterized by two points of focus, or, in modern parlance, commitments. These are: realism, namely the belief that mathematics is a descriptive science in the way that the empirical sciences are. The second commitment is to a form of Leibnizian rationalism in philosophy; and in fact Gödel’s principal philosophical influences, in this regard particularly but also many others, were Leibniz, Kant and Husserl. (For further discussion of how these philosophers influenced Gödel, see van Atten and Kennedy 2003.)