[ricksplat]

> Augustine, Aquinus

> nuggets of so-called wisdom presented without argument

I think P-1 is half right in that Augustine and Aquinas are similar to the Eastern philosophy described by P.

These great catholic philosophers were of a scholastic [0] tradition, relying on syllogistic reasoning alone - deriving from certain axioms similar to the "nuggets" of eastern wisdom.

I don't think it's necessarily fair to lump Descartes and Kant into this category as they were far more of the inductive tradition. The former was writing at a time when to write about such a thing could be considered heresy, so he had to work around some of these "axioms". The latter wasn't so much religious as informed by his cultural context.

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scholasticism