Western Culture Global Presents The Top 100 Heroes of Western Culture These individuals have most contributed to replacing ignorance with knowledge, savagery with civilization, disease with health, tyranny with liberty, poverty with abundance, and despair with happiness. #7: Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) was a central figure in reintroducing Aristotle, and thereby reason, to Europe after at least an 800-year absence. Reason, Aquinas said, does not rely on faith; it is an independent, natural faculty which is based on sense experience. The main task of reason is not to clarify revelation, but rather, as Aristotle had said, to acquire knowledge of this world. Aquinas said that reason must be used and obeyed by man, and its proven conclusions accepted as true. Even though the philosophy of Aquinas was far from secular (he said that supernatural revelation / faith and reason are complementary rather than contradictory), he still succeeded in elevating reason into a profound cultural power, to a height not achieved since the Greco-Roman era. The result in historical short order was the identification of the religion-dominated Middle Ages as "The Dark Ages," the decline of the Church's authority, the end of feudalism, and the start of the Renaissance. Renaissance means "rebirth," and what was reborn was reason and man's interest with all things worldly. On the scene arrived some of the most innovative individuals of history, such as Petrarch, Da Vinci, Galileo, Michelangelo and others who provided an outpouring of secular philosophy, natural science, man-glorifying art, and the pursuit of Earthly happiness -- values that continue to shape our world for the better today. Without the contribution of Aquinas, Europe and virtually the entire world may still today be trapped in the ignorance, oppression, poverty and near-anarchy that characterized much of the Middle Ages. Go to #8: Copernicus Top 100 Western Culture Heroes — Home Top 100 Western Culture Heroes — by Numerical Order Top 100 Western Culture Heroes — by Century Top 100 Western Culture Heroes — by Category
			Home | Knowledge Center | Top 100 Western Culture Heroes | Projects | About Us | Contact © 2009 Western Culture Global