Raphael’s School of Athens From the Perspective of Angeletics

Abstract

Raphael’s famous painting the School of Athens is given a fresh perspective through the prism of Angeletics and Messaging Theory as developed by Rafael Capurro and the author in our 2011 publication Messages and Messengers (Capurro & Holgate, 2011). In a close analysis of the messaging paradigm employed by the painter in the School and related works a radical new viewpoint of Raphael’s artistic message is presented. The orthodox theological interpretation of The School (notably by Giorgio Vasari (Vasari, 1550), Johann David Passavant (Passavant, 1839) and Eugène Müntz (Müntz, 1888) is questioned in the light of the philosophical framework provided by the exiting and departing messengers—Diagoras of Melos and Theodorus the Atheist. Diagoras himself represents the transforming mission of angelos (messenger) at work in the Renaissance theatre of knowledge and is an avatar for Raphael’s essentially heteronomic philosophy. In conclusion the author draws a parallel between the Platonic Hieros Logos depicted in the School, the autonomic theocracy of the Renaissance and our contemporary posthumanist world of Big Data with its veneration of the algorithm and its seductive reduction of Logos to the logo and the brand. The true message of the School reveals itself to us as a warning about the precarious state of global citizenship in our digital age.