Gesture and perspective in Raphael's School of Athens

In David Michael Kleinberg-Levin’s Gestures of Ethical Life, the author explores the phenomenological idea of “right measure” in political life, highlighting how gestures reveal a deeply embedded redemptive understanding of human existence. 1 Lamenting the loss of ethical gesture in Modernity, Kleinberg-Levin examines the philosophical context of human measure in ancient Greek thought and its enduring influence on modern thinkers, such as Friedrich Hölderlin and Martin Heidegger. This philosophically oriented view of measure provides a background to my investigations of Renaissance perspective, particularly in regard to the manner in which pictorial space constitutes a communicative framework for bringing human gesture into appearance.