The SCHOOL of ATHENSThe School of Athens,

or Scuola di Atene in Italian, is one of the most famous frescoes

by the Italian Renaissance artist Raphael. It was painted between 1509 and 1510.

"Raphael received a hearty welcome from Pope Julius, and in the chamber of the Segnatura he painted...

Aristotle and Plato, with the Ethics and Timaeus respectively, and a group of philosophers in a ring about them.

Indescribably fine are those astrologers and geometricians drawing figures and characters with their sextants.

He further adorned his work with a perspective and many figures, so delicately and finely finished

that Pope Julius caused all the other works of the other masters, both old and new to be destroyed,

that Raphael alone might have the glory of replacing what had been done.“

Giorgio Vasari, The Lives of the Most Excellent Architects, Painters, and Sculptors,2nd edition, Forence, 1568

The School of Athens represents all the greatest mathematicians,

philosophers and scientists from classical antiquity

gathered together sharing their ideas

and learning from each other. These figures all lived

at different times, but here they are gathered

together under one roof.

The School of Athens is one of a group

of four main frescoes on the walls of the Stanza

that depict distinct branches of knowledge.

Commentators have suggested that nearly every

great Greek philosopher can be found within the painting.

Plato = da VinciAristotle = Giuliano da Sangallo

Heraclit = MichelangeloApelles = Raphael

In the centre of the fresco, at its architecture's central vanishing point,

are the two undisputed main subjects: Plato on the left

and Aristotle, his student, on the right.

Aristotle 384 – 322 BCE was a Greek philosopher.His writings cover many subjects – including physics, biology, zoology,

metaphysics, logic, ethics, aesthetics, poetry, theater, music,

rhetoric, linguistics, politics and government –

and constitute the first comprehensive system of Western philosophy.

Plato 428/427 or 424/423 BC– 348/347 BCwas a philosopher in Classical Greece.

He was also a mathematician, student of Socrates, and founder of the Academy in Athens,

the first institution of higher learning in the Western world.

Both figures hold modern (of the time), bound copies of their books in their left hands,

while gesturing with their right. Plato holds Timaeus,

Aristotle his Nicomachean EthicsPlato's Timaeus was, even in the Renaissance, a very influential

treatise on the cosmos, whereas Aristotle insisted that the purpose of ethics is

"practical" rather than "theoretical" or "speculative“.

Socrates 470/469 BC – 399 BC) was a classical Greek (Athenian) philosopher,credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy.

Socratic thinking revolve around self knowledge - Gnothi se auton. From Socrates, the man becomes a problem for himself.

"Your person is your soul" he said.

Socrate

Sapho din Lesbos

One of the best known sayings of Socrates is "I know that I know nothing“.

Saying he knows nothing, Socrates is not an ignorant or not trying to assert the uselessness of knowledge.This is not an abdication or a cause for resignation,

but, on the contrary, is the first step to be able to know something."I know that I don't know anything, but I know that I know more than I know."

The trial and execution of Socrates took place in 399 BC. Socrates was tried on two charges: corrupting the youth and impiety.

More specifically, Socrates' accusers cited two "impious" acts: "failing to acknowledge the gods that the city acknowledges"

and "introducing new deities".

After the vote on Socrates' guilt, his prosecutor proposed the death penalty.The jury voted for death as the penalty.

Apparently in accordance with his philosophy of obedience to law, he carried out his own execution, by drinking the hemlock provided to him.

Socrates died at the age of 70.

Socrates was acquitted in 2012 after 2500 years from death,in a new process, symbolically, in Greece.

Sappho was a Greek lyric poet, born on the island of Lesbos. Her birth was sometime between 630 and 612 BC,

and it is said that she died around 570 BC, but little is known for certain about her life.

The bulk of her poetry, which was well-known and greatly admired through much of antiquity, has been lost.

But, her immense reputation has endured through surviving fragments.

Sappho's poetry centers on passion and love for various people and both sexes. The word lesbian derives from the name of the island of her birth,

Lesbos, while her name is also the origin of the word Sapphic.

Heraclitus of Ephesus c. 535 – c. 475 BCE was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher.He was called "The Obscure" and the "Weeping Philosopher".

Heraclitus is famous for his insistence on ever-present change in the universe, as stated in the famous saying, "No man ever steps in the same river twice"

- Panta rhei, "everything flows“.He believed in the unity of opposites, stating

that "the path up and down are one and the same", all existing entities being characterized

by pairs of contrary properties. For Hegel, Heraclitus's great achievements

were to have understood the nature of the infinite, which for Hegel includes understanding

the inherent contradictoriness and negativity of reality, and to have grasped that reality is becoming or process.

Parmenides

Hypatia

Pythagoras

Epicur

Parmenides of Elea - 5th century BCE - was an ancient Greek philosopher.He was the founder of the Eleatic school of philosophy.

The single known work of Parmenides is a poem, On Nature, which has survived only in fragmentary form.

In this poem, Parmenides describes two views of reality. In "the way of truth" (a part of the poem), he explains how reality

(coined as "what-is") is one, change is impossible, and existence is timeless, uniform, necessary, and unchanging. In "the way of opinion," he explains the world of appearances,

in which one's sensory faculties lead to conceptions which are false and deceitful.

These ideas strongly influenced the whole of Western philosophy.

Hypatia (born c. AD 350 – 370; died 415) was a Greek Alexandrine Neoplatonist philosopher in Egypt

who was one of the earliest mothers of mathematics.No written work, widely recognized by scholars as Hypatia's own,

has survived to the present time. A partial list of Hypatia's works

as mentioned by other antique and medieval authors or as posited by modern authors:

• A commentary on the 13-volume Arithmetica by Diophantus• A commentary on the Conics of Apollonius.

• Edited the existing version of Ptolemy's Almagest• Edited her father's commentary on Euclid's Elements

• She wrote a text "The Astronomical Canon".

As head of the Platonist school at Alexandria, she also taught philosophy and astronomy.

Mathematician, astronomer, educator, inventor, musician, philosopher, Hypathia of Alexandria is a symbol of reason, science, thinking without dogmas.

According to the contemporary source, Hypatia was murdered by a Christian mob.

Some of them, therefore, hurried away by a fierce and bigoted zeal, whose ringleader was a reader named Peter,

waylaid her returning home and, dragging her from her carriage.

They took her to the church called Caesareum, where they completely stripped her, and then murdered her with tiles.

After tearing her body in pieces,they took her mangled limbs to a place called Cinaron,

and there burnt them.

Pythagoras of Samos (c. 570 BC – c. 495 BC) was an Ionian Greek philosopher, mathematician,

and founder of the religious movement called Pythagoreanism.Pythagoras made influential contributions to philosophy

and religion in the late 6th century BC. He is often revered as a great mathematician, mystic, and scientist

but is best known for the Pythagorean theorem which bears his name.

Epicurus (341–270 BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher as well as the founder of the school of philosophy called Epicureanism.

For Epicurus, the purpose of philosophy was to attain the happy, tranquil life,

characterized by ataraxia — peace and freedom from fear— and aponia — the absence of pain —

and by living a self-sufficient life surrounded by friends.

Strabo

n

Ptolemeu

Euclid

Euclid (born unknown - died unknown) was a Greek mathematician,

often referred to as the "Father of Geometry".

In the Elements, Euclid deduced the principles of what is now called Euclidean geometry from a small set of

axioms.

His Elements is one of the most influential works in the history of mathematics, serving as the main textbook for teaching mathematics (especially geometry)

from the time of its publication until the late 19th or early 20th century.

Strabo (64/63 BC – c. AD 24)was a Greek geographer, philosopher and historian.

Strabo is most famous for his work Geographica, which presented a descriptive history

of people and places from different regions of the world known to his

era

Claudius Ptolemy (c. AD 90 – c. AD 168) was a Greco-Roman writer of Alexandria,

known as a mathematician, astronomer, geographer, astrologer.Ptolemy was the author of several scientific treatises,

three of which were of continuing importance to later Islamic and European science.

Ptolemy's model, was geocentric and was almost universally accepted until the appearance of simpler heliocentric models

during the scientific revolution.

Diogenes of Sinope was a Greek philosopher and one of the founders of Cynic philosophy.

He was born in Sinope in 412 or 404 BCE and died at Corinth in 323 BCE.

He embarrassed Plato, disputed his interpretation of Socrates and sabotaged his lectures.

He believed that virtue was better revealed in action than in theory.

He used his simple lifestyle and behavior to criticise the social values and institutions of what he saw as a corrupt society.

He became notorious for his philosophical stunts such as carrying a lamp in the daytime,

claiming to be looking for an honest man.

He begged for a living and slept in a large ceramic jar in the marketplace.

(Heraclitus) Michelangelo with dark and pensive air,sitting on the stairs

with one arm resting on a block of marble,is the last character painted in this Fresco,

and is Rafaels's homage to the artistthat ended the Sistine Chapel.

Images and Texts : www.wikipedia.com/en/fr/it http://smarthistory.khanacademy.org/ www.aparences.net www.wga.hu http://learn.columbia.edu Music : Bach-Gounod - Ave Maria

Author : Adrian TOIA