Raphael, School of Athens, 1509-11. detail, Vatican Museums (8) (48759435612)

The two philosophers stand at the center of a vast architectural space. Plato points toward the sky while holding his cosmological treatise, the Timaeus, while Aristotle gestures toward the earth, carrying his Nicomachean Ethics. Their contrasting gestures symbolize the tension between transcendental idealism and empirical realism.

This image represents the foundation of the Western philosophical tradition and the Neoplatonic synthesis of the High Renaissance. Plato's Timaeus was a foundational text for esoteric cosmology, describing the creation of the universe by a divine craftsman (the Demiurge) according to mathematical principles.