ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the work of Aristotle, Saint Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther and John Locke. Each of the thinkers take to the relationship between reason, persons and value are to a large degree paradigmatic of dominant western ideas, which have, and continue to have, a critical impact on the construction of and response to intellectual disability. The chapter deals with both the general impact of their thought as well as specific textual references. It considers specific social responses, which are either contemporary with, or ontologically related to, the central ideas of these thinkers. The chapter also shows that the interplay between ideas of reason, value and personhood. It focuses on the relationship between ideas about reason, persons and value, and how these affected general social attitudes and ideas about intellectual disability both in the contemporary history. Under the doctrine of Grace the person with an intellectual disability achieves an equality of status unknown in classical thought.
