Reason

===Christian and Islamic philosophy===

The classical view of reason, like many important Neoplatonic and Stoic ideas, was readily adopted by the early Church<ref>{{Citation|chapter=Plato and Platonism|title=Catholic Encyclopedia|chapter-url=https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12159a.htm|last=Turner|first=William|year=1911|location=New York|publisher=Robert Appleton Company|volume=12}}</ref> as the Church Fathers saw Greek Philosophy as an indispensable instrument given to mankind so that we may understand revelation.<ref>{{Citation|title=Catholic Dictionary|chapter=Hellenism|chapter-url=https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/dictionary/index.cfm?id=33893}}</ref>{{Verify source|reason=source does not appear to validate claim|date=September 2023}} For example, the greatest among the early [[Church Fathers]] and [[Doctors of the Church]] such as [[Augustine of Hippo]], [[Basil of Caesarea]], and [[Gregory of Nyssa]] were as much Neoplatonic philosophers as they were Christian theologians, and they adopted the Neoplatonic view of human reason and its implications for our relationship to creation, to ourselves, and to God.

The Neoplatonic conception of the rational aspect of the human soul was widely adopted by medieval Islamic philosophers and continues to hold significance in [[Iranian philosophy]].<ref name=Davidson/> As European intellectual life reemerged from the [[Dark Ages (historiography)|Dark Ages]], the Christian [[Patristic]] tradition and the influence of esteemed Islamic scholars like [[Averroes]] and [[Avicenna]] contributed to the development of the [[Scholasticism|Scholastic]] view of reason, which laid the foundation for our modern understanding of this concept.<ref>{{Citation|chapter=Reason|title=Catholic Encyclopedia|chapter-url=https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12673b.htm|last=Rahilly|first=Alfred|year=1911|location=New York|publisher=Robert Appleton Company|volume=12}}</ref>

Among the Scholastics who relied on the classical concept of reason for the development of their doctrines, none were more influential than [[Saint Thomas Aquinas]], who put this concept at the heart of his [[Natural Law]]. In this doctrine, Thomas concludes that because humans have reason and because reason is a spark of the divine, every single human life is invaluable, all humans are equal, and every human is born with an intrinsic and permanent set of basic rights.<ref>{{Citation|chapter=Natural Law|title=Catholic Encyclopedia|chapter-url=https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09076a.htm|last=Fox|first=James|year=1910|location=New York|publisher=Robert Appleton Company|volume=9}}</ref> On this foundation, the idea of human rights would later be constructed by Spanish theologians at the [[School of Salamanca]].

Other Scholastics, such as [[Roger Bacon]] and [[Albertus Magnus]], following the example of Islamic scholars such as [[Alhazen]], emphasised reason an intrinsic human ability to decode the created order and the structures that underlie our experienced physical reality. This interpretation of reason was instrumental to the development of the scientific method in the early Universities of the high Middle Ages.<ref>{{Citation|chapter=Religion and Science|title=Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy|year=2022|publisher=Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University|chapter-url=https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/religion-science/|first=Helen|last=De Cruz}}</ref>