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Kurti, B., & Iseni, A. (2023). The School of Athens, the Philosophical Artwork that Conveys All Human Knowledge, International
Journal of Cognitive Research in Science, Engineering and Education (IJCRSEE), 11(1), 165-172.
Introduction
While Michelangelo was painting the dome of the Sistine Chapel in Vatican, a few feet away,
another artist was painting a fresco that would go down in history as one of the world’s masterpieces.
This artist was Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino (1483-1520), who today is known, after Leonardo da Vinci and
Michelangelo, as the third gure of the most important artistic trinity of the Golden Renaissance, even of
the entire history of art.
Raffaello, whom we know today as Raphael, is the author of The School of Athens fresco (1509-
1511), in which the whole world saw for ve centuries, not only the aesthetic, emotional and spiritual
aspect of art, but also the intellectual aspect. In this fresco, Raphael painted the human mind. This work
is a university in which all human knowledge is summed up. This work is a holistic variation of cultural
anthropology and cultural cognitive science, engaging any viewer in a multicultural cognitive act and
process.
The School of Athens is considered one of the best examples, and even the pinnacle of the classical
Renaissance style. It depicts a pleasant scene of people dressed in ancient clothes and engaged in
various forms of intellectual activity: conversations, readings, explanations and listening. All the gures
are composed within a luxurious Roman architectural structure, through which the eye is drawn to the
blue sky seen in the background.
The identities of the 58 gures in the painting have intrigued scholars and researchers for a long
time. Many of the gures are known and easily recognizable, but some others still remain a mystery.
In the room where the fresco is located, Pope Julius II, in 1508, ordered the young master from
Urbino to paint the walls of his personal rooms in the Vatican Palace. The School of Athens is found
The School of Athens, the Philosophical Artwork that Conveys All
Human Knowledge
Bledar Kurti
1
, Arburim Iseni
2*
1
Albanian University, Faculty of Social Science, Department of Education and English Tirana, Albania,
e-mail: bledarkurti77@gmail.com
2
State University of Tetovo, Faculty of Philology, Department of English Language and Literature Tetova,
Republic of North Macedonia, e-mail: arburim.iseni@unite.edu.mk
Abstract: The School of Athens, the fresco by Raphael, is an artwork in which the whole world has seen for ve
centuries, not only the aesthetic, emotional and spiritual aspect of art, but also the philosophical and intellectual one. In this
fresco Raphael painted the human mind. This work is a holistic variation of cultural anthropology and cultural cognitive science.
It is a university in which all human knowledge is summoned. Raphael combined paganism and humanism within the Vatican
premises. Making this fresco a signicant work, reecting and conveying the core cultural values and universal ideals, offering
an excellent opportunity for any viewer to engage in a multicultural cognitive act and process. This paper presents how this multi-
dimensional and multi-disciplinary work serves as an ideal example for today’s works and philosophy to connect all creative and
philosophical disciplines into one, inspiring today’s thought and the new works of creative arts to contain the human knowledge
of the ages, uniting the past and future, as a meeting point of history, reason, discovery and human aspirations. It will present
how this complex artwork includes knowledge, philosophy, art, morals, customs, etc, acquired by any member of society to
understand human cultural cognition.
Keywords: Athens, Raphael, Plato, Aristotle, Cultural Cognition.
Review Article
Received: January, 31.2023.
Revised: March, 12.2023.
Accepted: March, 24.2023.
UDK:
75.071.1 Рафаел
75.052.04(450)15”
10.23947/2334-8496-2023-11-1-165-172
© 2023 by the authors. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the
Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
*
Corresponding author: arburim.iseni@unite.edu.mk
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Kurti, B., & Iseni, A. (2023). The School of Athens, the Philosophical Artwork that Conveys All Human Knowledge, International
Journal of Cognitive Research in Science, Engineering and Education (IJCRSEE), 11(1), 165-172.
on one of the four painted walls of the Stanza della Segnatura (Signature Room), designated to be the
Pope’s personal library.
This paper presents how this multi-dimensional and multi-disciplinary work serves as an ideal
example for today’s works and philosophy to connect all creative and philosophical disciplines into one,
inspiring new thought and new works of creative arts to contain the human knowledge of the ages, uniting
the past and future, as a meeting point of history, reason, discovery and human aspirations. It will present
how this complex artwork includes knowledge, philosophy, art, morals, customs, etc, acquired by any
member of society to understand human cultural cognition.
The School of Athens
At that time, libraries were divided by categories; in this case, the room is divided into four
categories: Theology, Philosophy, Poetry and Law. All four categories are marked on the ceiling of the
room. Philosophy has a female gure engraved with the motto causarum cognitio, (knowledge of causes).
Theology, with the motto divinarum notitia (knowledge of divine things). The other two are Poetry and
Law. The two dominant frescoes of the room facing each other are Theology and Philosophy illustrated
with The School of Athens fresco, as two confrontations between the worlds of intellect and religion.
Together, they expressed the world that Pope Julius II wished to promote: a glorious synthesis of the
totality of learning within the seat of papal power. Pagan antiquity welcomed into the bosom of the Church.
(Bosman, 2014, p. 67).
The fresco technique is one of the most difcult techniques in painting. Unlike canvases or wood
paintings, which can be created for years and years, the fresco must be created in a day. The process
is very difcult and requires a great preparation of materials and speed in casting the colors. To paint
this fresco, Raphael rst drew each gure on paper, then joining the pieces, he placed them on the wall,
piercing the drawing lines with nails, and then sprinkled black powder to leave a trace of the gures on
the wall. The biggest difculty was with the paint. The helpers plastered the wall and the master painted
quickly before it dried, so that the wall would absorb the paint and become resistant to time. Imagining this
difcult technique, we can understand the genius and skill of Raphael who created such a work.
Raphael chose the subject of his fresco from Greece of the V century BC, from the speech of
Pericles where it was said “Athens, is the school of Greece.” Therefore, the two central gures of the
fresco are the two colossi of world knowledge and philosophy: Plato and Aristotle. These two gures
are the center of the fresco from which all the diagonal lines and reference points for linear perspective
originate.
At the center of the picture are Plato (pointing up to his ideals in heaven) and Aristotle (gesturing
down to the real world here on earth (Haas, 2012, p.8)). Plato, on the left, holds his Timaeus while
Aristotle, on the right, holds his Ethics. Plato, depicted with the portrait of Leonardo da Vinci, is dressed in
pink and purple, colors that symbolize re and air, while Aristotle is dressed in blue and brown, the colors
of water and earth. Both of these gures symbolize the four physical elements of the universe but also the
two basic worldviews of philosophy. Plato has the index nger of his right hand pointing towards the sky,
while Aristotle has his palm pointing towards the earth. One the sky and the other the earth, this was also
the dividing line between the philosophers of the two enlightened minds.
Placing these two gures at the center and next to one another, was a philosophical, existential
and cultural cognitive symbolism engaging the viewer to participate and make a stance in the conicting
presence of these two philosophers who represented two opposing views and beliefs in almost every
discipline of thought.
Plato believed that concepts had a universal form, an ideal form. Aristotle believed that universal
forms were not necessarily associated with each object or concept, and that each instance of an object
or concept had to be analyzed on its own. For Plato knowledge was a virtue while Aristotle believed it
had to be earned. Plato stood out in the world as “the great apostle of morality.” He believed that God’s
voice left an echo in the human heart, but for Aristotle, God was indifferent to virtue. He was an opinion
and not a moral. For him morality had no eternal basis, no divine nature, and no reward in the next world.
Aristotle’s philosophy emphasized reason and ignored conscience and heart (Cocker, 2018, p.886). Thus,
the idealist and the pragmatist, painted in the center of this fresco, with the right hand of one and the left
of the other integrated into the architectural arch that stands above them like an aura of glory.
Raphael adds to this peaceful conict other important gures, such as Socrates, Zeno of Citium,
Epicurus, Boethius, Pythagoras, Alexander the Great, Pericles, Xenophanes, Parmenides, Heraclitus,
Euclid, Archimedes, Zoroaster, Ptolemy, Protogonus, and dozens of philosophers and outstanding ancient
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Kurti, B., & Iseni, A. (2023). The School of Athens, the Philosophical Artwork that Conveys All Human Knowledge, International
Journal of Cognitive Research in Science, Engineering and Education (IJCRSEE), 11(1), 165-172.
Greek and Roman gures who form the center of this fresco, but organized in three horizontal and two
vertical groups, belonging to either the philosophy of Plato or Aristotle. For ve centuries, scholars and
historians have always agreed on their identities and symbolism, which now are considered as public
domain.
In the background there are several arches and stairs that illustrate perspective, an important
discovery and element of that time, which form a Greek cross, illustration of the harmony between pagan
philosophy and Christian theology. In the background there are also two sculptures, that of Apollo, on the
left, the god of light, bows and music, holding a lyre in his hand, while the other sculpture is Athena, the
goddess of knowledge.
Raphael was a great admirer of two art colossi who were his contemporaries, Leonardo and
Michelangelo. Thus, both of them are painted in this fresco. Leonardo in the portrait of Plato, and
Michelangelo in the gure of Heraclitus, the foreground gure of the fresco, leaning thoughtfully with his
elbow on a block of marble, solitary and introvert, as Michelangelo really was, and so was Heraclitus.
Raphael is said to have repeatedly dropped by to check on Michelangelo as he worked on the Sistine
Chapel dome fresco in the next hall, a few meters away. The gure of Heraclitus, i.e. Michelangelo, was
added last, after the fresco was nished. Just as Plato and Aristotle stood for opposing ideologies and
believes, Leonardo and Michelangelo were two opposing gures of the Renaissance in personal aspects,
and sworn enemies and erce competitors in art and society. This harmonious conict represented in the
fresco is an open invitation for cognitive processing and cultural apprehension.
In the lower right corner, the bent gure, with a red cape and owing hair, is found the friend and
cousin of Raphael, Donato Bramante, the Pope’s architect, who is sketching a geometric shape with a
compass in his hand, which is actually the oor plan of St. Peter’s Basilica where this fresco is located,
created by the hand of the master Bramante, whom Raphael compares to Euclid, the outstanding Greek
mathematician, the father of geometry. But behind Euclid, Raphael left his signature, painting himself
through a self-portrait hidden behind the column, wearing a black hat, half-prole and looking towards the
viewer, as a message for future ages that art it is an integral part of the universal school. He has painted
himself hidden, somehow enigmatic, just like his own short life of thirty-seven years, which in history has
remained only as a shadow, a sfumato, without living the kind of greatness that is manifested in his works.
(Forcellino, 2015, p.7).
Behind Euclid are Zoroaster, the Iranian philosopher and spiritualist, holding a celestial globe, and
Ptolemy, the astrologer, with a terrestrial globe. In the gure of Zoroaster, Raphael painted Jacopo Sadoleto,
the pope’s secretary. The celestial and terrestrial globes were important elements for the Renaissance,
due to the extraordinary discoveries and expansion of the world at the time of Pope Julius II. The Cape
of Good Hope was discovered in 1487, the West Indies and America in 1492, India in 1498 and Brazil in
1500. Balboa would discover the Pacic in 1513 and Magellan would complete his circumnavigation of the
globe in 1521.The geographical horizon had greatly expanded during the papacy of Julius II and Christian
preachers were being sent to India, Africa and the New World. Thus, these ancient scholars unfolded by
the hand of Raphael were suited to the Christian interests of Pope Julius (Joost-Gaugier, 1998, p.760).
In the lower left corner of the fresco, Pythagoras is seen seated, writing, covered with a white robe,
with owing hair. He is engrossed in writing in his book with the young disciple holding a slate diagramming
musical intervals and the mystic formula 1+2+3+4=10 (Haas, 2012, p.9). He is also surrounded by thinkers
of antiquity, among them, as distinguished by the white turban and the dark skin, is also Averroes, the
Arab philosopher, known as Ibn Rushd.
Pythagoras is known as the great mathematician and astronomer but Raphael pays homage to
his Great Theory of Beauty. The Ancient Greeks formulated The General Theory of Beauty according to
which beauty consists in the proportions of the parts; in the proportions and the proper arrangement of
the parts, or, even more precisely, in the size, quality and number of the parts and their interrelations. The
Great Theory was developed by the Pythagoreans. The Pythagorean School dened beauty in terms of
perfect structure, and structure was dened in terms of the proportions of the parts (Kostov, 2013, p.3).
This Pythagorean denition is expressed explicitly in the fresco, incorporating also moral beauty and
combining aesthetics and ethics.
In the center of the fresco, under the two main gures of Plato and Aristotle, stands out the Greek
philosopher Diogenes, known as Diogenes the Cynic, as he was one of the founders of Cynic philosophy.
Posed on the steps of the stage, covered in a blue cloak, appearing as a beggar, Raphael has depicted
him as he was known, a philosopher who chose a simple lifestyle, eating and sleeping where he pleased,
but homeless, in order to criticize social values and institutions which he considered corrupt.
Raphael is not timid to include the Arab philosophers at the heart of Christianity, and he has even
shown himself to be very brave with Epicurus, who is on the left with a blue cloak and a laurel wreath on
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Kurti, B., & Iseni, A. (2023). The School of Athens, the Philosophical Artwork that Conveys All Human Knowledge, International
Journal of Cognitive Research in Science, Engineering and Education (IJCRSEE), 11(1), 165-172.
his head, a philosopher very contradictory to the Christian faith, since he promoted pleasure as good,
death as the annihilator of body and soul, and promoted the idea that the gods neither reward nor punish
mankind. The school of the Epicureans, but also the Stoics, brought a philosophy which ridiculed the
doctrines of resurrection and judgment. Their philosophy directed attention only to the welfare of the
individual in this world; it was simply a philosophy on life and not like Plato’s, which was “a preparation for
death.” The followers of Epicurus believed that “Pleasure is the chief good, the end of life is self-pleasure;
therefore do not fear the gods any more, and above all do not fear death. Others took refuge in the Stoics,
saying “fata nos ducunt – the fates guide us! Live according to reason.” (Cocker, 2018, p.887). This is
another timeless conicting atmosphere on religion, wisely and harmoniously presented as a stage play,
requiring once again the cognitive participation of the viewer.
But, however liberal The School of Athens fresco may seem, considering the period and the location,
as well as how conicting with the creed of Christianity, if analyzed in the historical context and considering
some unexplained but implied elements of the work, it is understood that it was neither a manifestation of
rebellion nor a threat for the Christian faith and the papacy. The whole scene of the ancient scholars, and
the brightest minds of mankind, takes place in the lower half of the fresco. The upper half is covered only
with architectural space, which culminates with three small windows which, like in Leonardo’s Last Supper,
not only serve to create the notion of space for a room without windows, but also serve as symbolism of the
holy trinity, thus transmitting the message that the greatest knowledge of humanity, however magnicent
it may be, remains earthly, and always under the presence of the divine. This method brought about an
intertwining of religion with emotion and cognitive process. The intertwining of religion and emotion was
deeply rooted in the Christian anthropology that commended the power of human emotion. In this fresco
the language about religion, conveyed through imagery, religious experience and emotion is intertwined,
creating a new approach how religion was conceptualized (Corrigan, 2017, pp.3-5). By adding elements
of paganism Raphael raises this cognitive and emotional approach to a new level.
In order to understand this setting the viewer had to be personally part of the atmosphere, engaging
all his faculties and perceptive abilities and senses. Raphael’s work impacts the visual perception, i.e. the
capacity to identify, classify, and interpret visual stimuli in light of prior knowledge, describing the cognitive
skills that integrate visual information into higher cognitive functions and processes (Ferah-Ozcan and
Yildiz, 2022, p.2).
It is worth noticing that Raphael combined paganism and humanism within the Vatican with the
full blessing of Pope Julius II, at a time when the papacy itself had been more open to ancient lore and
pagan mythology for centuries. The penetration of Humanism into the practices of Christianity had been
evolving slowly and gently for centuries. It was Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) a well-known Dominican
and theologian of his time, who believed that man had rebelled against God but that his fall was partial.
According to him, the will of man was corrupted while the intellect was not affected. Therefore people
could rely on human wisdom by mixing the teachings of the Bible with the teachings of ancient non-
Christian philosophers.
Thanks to him, Aristotle was accepted to be taught in the universities, and the geniuses of the
Renaissance created works where Christianity clearly mixes with paganism and humanism, as seen in
the works of Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael. Even Dante Alighieri followed the path of Acquinas in
his work The Divine Comedy, where in Inferno, the guide is the Roman poet Virgil, who was to Dante what
Aristotle was to Acquinas, and as the greatest sinners of hell Dante named Lucifer who betrayed God,
Judas who betrayed Christ, as well as Brutus and Cassius who betrayed Caesar (Schaeffer, 2022, p.56).
Therefore, the mixture of paganism and Christianity had become a fashion over the centuries and an
artistic tool for the art of the Renaissance, which, like The School of Athens, could also be interpreted as a
cult work for man, the power of human thought and the tradition of pagan gods in history of humanity. The
coexistence between this cult and Christianity was so organically intertwined and difcult to distinguish
that it allowed pagan gods within the premises of church worship.
Even St. Augustine, one of the church fathers, seems to accept their union when he wrote that “Plato
made me know the true God, while Jesus Christ showed me the way to Him.” (Augustine, 2015, p.184).
This union would be copied in the future by Enlightenment, philosophical groups, and revolutionaries who
would tone down the divine nature of Christian places of worship and promote more human nature and
attributes. For example, eighteenth-century church architecture features churches decorated with angels
and cherubim as if they were out-of-this-world drawing rooms, colorfully decorated to entice the masses
and create choir resonance. Pushed by art, church music also went through a metamorphosis, including
the music of Bach, Handel, Heidi, Beethoven and Mozart in church services (Green, 2000, p.230).
Certainly, it also expanded into literature and politics. Niccolo Machiavelli’s famous work The
Prince, published a few years after the completion of The School of Athens fresco, promoted pragmatism
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Kurti, B., & Iseni, A. (2023). The School of Athens, the Philosophical Artwork that Conveys All Human Knowledge, International
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rather than morality, humanism rather than faith. Complicated in political nature, Machiavelli’s advice is far
from canonical biblical principles. They are typically humanist and pragmatist. For example, Machiavelli
advises the prince, in this case Lorenzo de’ Medici, that he should not be merciful but mean, not gentle
but rude, not fair but manipulative: If he is wise, the prince need not fear the reputation of being bad…
We have not seen great things done, except by those who have considered themselves evil... For this
reason it is wiser to have a reputation for being mean because it brings you a rebuke without hatred...
(Machiavelli, 1998, Ch. XVI-XIX).
Whenever we see or discuss such works of art, to understand them better we need to be well
informed and well read. Art as mere aesthetics is amateurism and naivety. A work of art either has the
heart or the mind, or both. Raphael’s portraits, Saint Mary and other paintings are full of heart and feeling
as they radiate a sensuous and almost divine delicacy and beauty, but in this case, with the fresco
The School of Athens, with this university work, the viewer must put his mind to work, interact, use his
faculties and cognitive thinking, and call for knowledge as aid, because it is a true reection of the events,
achievements and developments of time.
A viewer may naively ask why there are so many names of philosophers in this fresco. And the
answer comes from history. On May 29, 1453, the Ottomans entered the golden city of Constantinople,
today’s Istanbul, thus signaling the end of Byzantine Christian culture. This forced all the scholars, who
were much desired by the royal courts, to ee to western countries, nding refuge in the many universities
that had sprung up in Europe during the past two centuries. Two of the destinations where the scholars
arrived were Florence and Rome. This emigration was highly signicant, as it brought many classical
thinkers back to the attention of Western culture. Furthermore, due to Johann Gutenberg’s invention of
the printing press, texts such as the Bible, ancient works only available to a few could now be widely read.
By 1500, over half a million printed books were circulating in Europe, spreading new intellectual ideas
across the continent (Kissik, 1993, p.151). Thus, mythology and ancient lore became a thing of fashion
and an inspiration for the academic and intellectual ranks. Hence, under this spirit, Renaissance artists
manifested that ancient lore and knowledge through their works.
The artists of the Renaissance were not simply painters or sculptors, they were engineers,
researchers, historians, poets, etc., and among other things Raphael was also an architect and an
archaeologist, thus, The School of Athens fresco consists in a large part of architectural forms. In his time,
Raphael was well-known and important gure. Raphael’s interest in architecture provides much of the
grandeur in The School of Athens. By 1514 he was named the papal architect, a position suggesting he
had a substantial knowledge of practical mathematics (Haas, 2012, p.6).
As the architect of St. Peter’s he held an important position with many other architects under his
command. As a painter he had a world-wide known name and a staff of assistants for his paintings. And
as an archaeologist he was the leader of excavations and tried to systematize the measurements and
restorations of ancient Rome. He accurately measured the architectural remains of Rome’s old buildings.
He wanted to reveal the foundations of ancient Rome in all its grandeur; therefore, although the gures in
his fresco are Athenian, the architecture of the work reects his work as an archaeologist and architect,
painting it as Roman. Because of the great passion he had for archaeology, Raphael exhausted himself
and his death came because of the fever that he caught during the excavations (Kissik, 1993, p.21). Due,
to his architectural knowledge and talent, The School of Athens conveys an immersive experience and
storytelling that makes the user lose the separation between real and virtual world (Bonacini, 2021, p.37)
requiring the cognitive participation of the viewer to perceive the scene and understand the artwork.
“Raphael! As we merely whisper this magical name,” writes a 19th-century author, “our whole
being seems enchanted. Wonder, delight, and awe seize our souls, throwing us into a whirlwind of strong
emotions.” However, today he still remains unknown. An artist of intelligence, sensuality and the divine. It
was not only Giorgio Vasari, the well-known biographer, who thought that Raphael’s art was divine, there
was no master of the Florentine school in the early 16th century who did not acknowledge his superiority
(Crowe and Cavalcaselle, 2022. p.2). His masterful talent and genius is surely demonstrated in The
School of Athens, where all the human senses, including that of space, of the notion of past, present and
future, perspective and cognitive abilities, are required.
It is not known exactly when Raphael started painting, but it is known that he started very early.
Perhaps he painted from the moment he could hold a brush in his hand. His father was a highly respected
painter of the school of plastic perspective, so Raphael learned easily to depict the human form and to
practice geometry and perspective in his works. The School of Athens is an intelligent fresco, but the
artistic delicacy of Raphael’s brush is more noticeable in the portraits and other compositions which
radiate a reection of beauty unprecedented in the history of art, making Raphael known as one of the
“most known and most loved” of the Golden Renaissance (Berenson, 2005, p.94). Even Pope Leo X,
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Kurti, B., & Iseni, A. (2023). The School of Athens, the Philosophical Artwork that Conveys All Human Knowledge, International
Journal of Cognitive Research in Science, Engineering and Education (IJCRSEE), 11(1), 165-172.
successor of Pope Julius II, emphasized the mastery of the artist. In the middle of the 16
th
century Raphael
was thought to be the ideal painter, the universal artist in his talent, meeting all the absolute standards
and obeying all the rules that govern art (Blunt, 1962, p.76). Today he is considered one of the absolute
masters in history.
There is one point in The School of Athens that might trouble today’s viewer, however it serves
evoking another element on the cultural cognitive process, i.e. the fresco contains no women. Among
the greatest minds of human knowledge and intelligence, Raphael did not include Hypatia, or Aspasia, or
the wise woman Diotima of Mantineia who was Socrates’ teacher. In extenuation though, Raphael paints
the great Greek woman poet Sappho, prominently positioned and labeled, on the adjacent wall fresco
Parnassus celebrating the arts and music (Haas, 2012, p.11). This urges the reective senses and social
cognitive participation.
Conclusion
The School of Athens summoned all the knowledge of the past, inuencing the knowledge of the
eras to come. As the viewer stands before it, in what is now known as the Raphael’s Hall, one kneels with
reverence before art and knowledge, and engages in the cultural cognitive process analyzing that ancient
expression, attributed sometimes to Socrates and sometimes to Plato, ipse se nihil scire id unum sciat, I
know that I know nothing.
Is this not the genesis of all knowledge, and the essence of art itself? Is this not the most inviting
exercise for cognitive thinking, and cultural cognitive involvement and participation? This multi-dimensional
and multi-disciplinary work serves as an ideal example for today’s works and philosophy to connect all
creative and philosophical disciplines into one. It inspires how new works of creative art can contain the
human knowledge of the ages, uniting the past and future, as a meeting point of history, reason, discovery
and human aspirations. It is a complex artwork that includes knowledge, philosophy, art, morals, customs,
faculties of the mind, perception abilities, and more, (Moore, 2022, p.194) acquired by any member of
society to understand human cultural cognition.
The work creates a semiotic activity that at its core there is a self-exceeding mechanism, which
triggers a moving-backward-and-forward relation between the sign and the interpreter. The concept of
“representation” is used to dene this relationship (Cerella and Bradley, 2023, pp.6-8). It stimulates the
cognitive, didactic, reective, and affective domains, fusing knowledge, thinking skills, and the centrality
of emotions, values, beliefs, and moral issues into a cohesive experience. The human world is constantly
being reopened and formed through the creation of new meaning.
The use of the symmetrical style mirrors the laws of nature and mathematics. The incorporation
of historic gures, architectural elements, specic symbols, as well as seemingly insignicant objects,
referring to philosophical concepts, invites humanity to understand and interact with the world.
This work is a holistic variation of cultural anthropology and cultural cognitive science. It is a
university in which all human knowledge is summoned. Through this fresco, intellectuals, philosophers,
as well as ordinary individuals, seek to use and intertwine the results from the cognitive science of culture
to determine or construct debates over many philosophical questions and beliefs, considering it as a
transformative example into modernity.
Conict of interests
The authors declare no conict of interest.
Author Contributions
Conceptualization: B.K. and A.I., Data curation: B.K. and A.I., Formal Analysis: B.K. and A.I.,
Investigation: A.I., Resources: B.K. and A.I., Software: B.K. and A.I., Supervision: B.K. and A.I., Validation:
B.K. and A.I., Visualization: B.K. and A.I., Writing original draft: B.K. and A.I., Writing review & editing: B.K.
and A.I. We conrm that all authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.
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Kurti, B., & Iseni, A. (2023). The School of Athens, the Philosophical Artwork that Conveys All Human Knowledge, International
Journal of Cognitive Research in Science, Engineering and Education (IJCRSEE), 11(1), 165-172.
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