Between 1509 and 1511, the Italian Renaissance artist, Raphael, did a mural called The School of Athens. Notable for its accurate perspective painting in an era when there was an argument between those who wanted to paint more lifelike stuff and those who felt that all art should glorify the church, The School of Athens was a painting about philosophers.
Most of us know the same general story about the history of philosophy. First, there was Greece, where democracy and philosophy were invented. Then came Rome, who reached the zenith of imperialism and government in the Western world, eventually fell throwing Europe into the Dark Ages, and then after centuries of darkness and ignorance came the Renaissance, when people like Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo and yes, Raphael, basically painted, invented and wrote Europe’s way out of ignorance. This tale is partially true and ignores the long period of about five centuries, where the Islamic world preserved the knowledge of Greece and Rome and was the world’s centre of learning.
One of the great Islamic scholars of the day was a man called Abu al-Walid ibn Rushd, or simply Averroes. He was a 12th-century polymath and jurist who wrote more than 100 books and treatises on many subjects, including philosophy, theology, medicine, astronomy, physics, psychology, mathematics, Islamic jurisprudence and law, and linguistics, who he featured on Raphael’s painting. You can find him in the painting, wearing a turban, second row, standing and trying to read something that Pythagoras was writing. An acknowledgement by Raphael of his greatness.
Averroes’s first patron was the Almohad Caliph, Abu Yaqub Yusuf (Yusuf 1), who impressed with his knowledge, ordered Averroes from Cordoba in today’s Spain, to the Royal Court in Marrakesh in today’s Morocco, paying for Averroes to stop working, and simply to think. That investment paid off. Averroes became known for his writings on Islamic theology, philosophy, jurisprudence, and medicine. He was the first known person to describe what is now known as Parkinson’s disease. He was both the court physician for the caliph’s family, as well as the chief judge of Cordoba.
Unfortunately for him, Yusuf I died in 1184 and was succeeded by Yaqub Al-Mansur; Averroes, for political reasons, fell out of favour and was exiled to Lucena in disgrace. At some point in 1198, Al-Mansur decided that he needed a thinker around him, and sent for Averroes to return to court. Averroes died a few months after returning to Marrakesh, and even though he was buried initially in Marrakesh, his body was exhumed and returned to his native Cordoba for burial.
Another great featured on The School of Athens is Leonardo da Vinci, who though a contemporary of Raphael, was one of those few people whose greatness was never in doubt even among his contemporaries. As a renowned polymath, Leonardo adopted an empirical approach to every thought, word and deed, and accepted no truth unless verified or verifiable. Leonardo wrote, “Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using his intelligence; he is just using his memory.”
Naturally, this approach brought him in conflict with the very powerful Catholic Church, but why did he not end up in prison as another polymath who lived a generation later, Galileo Galilei did? Galileo was not even given a proper funeral because Pope Urban VIII insisted that he was a heretic. What was so special about Leonardo?
Well, like Averroes four centuries earlier, Leonardo had some powerful patrons. Francis I, King of France and Restorer of Letters; Lorenzo de Medici; and Cesare Borgia, one of Italy’s most powerful condottiere or mercenary leader, were among those who liked Leonardo. Those were men whom even the Pope in those days would think twice before crossing. Borgia was the son of Pope Alexander VI. Nobody was going to touch Leonardo.
But this manner of sponsoring the arts and sciences changed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and perhaps the man most responsible for that change was Andrew Carnegie. Carnegie who died in 1919, overtook John Rockefeller as the richest man in the world when he sold his steel company to JP Morgan in 1901. After winning that battle which he had been fighting with Rockefeller for decades, Carnegie devoted the rest of his life to giving his wealth away, and by the time he died 18 years later, had given away the equivalent of $65 billion today, almost 90 percent of his wealth, to charitable causes, foundations and universities. It was Carnegie’s generosity, which was copied by Rockefeller and billionaires till this day, that set the template for financing the philosophy and the arts which we now enjoy and often take for granted.
Very importantly, this newfound institutional heft gave artists and creatives an independent voice, as they no longer had to rely on individual patrons to keep body and soul together. These billion-dollar foundations are institutions that will continue to sponsor artists regardless of what the artist’s body of work says or what she does in her personal life, save in some cases for when a personal affair is of such an egregious nature as to void the terms of the artist’s grant.
Why have I told these stories?
A few weeks ago, the son of a sitting state governor made a threat on social media. He threatened to rape the mother of someone who was heckling him. The governor has become a known patron of literary festivals since he got into office, sponsoring the country’s most prestigious literary festival, and being a friend to writers and feminists. In the aftermath of his son’s behaviour, Nigeria’s literary community immediately divided itself into those who were for, and those who were against an utterly condemnable act of cyberbullying. The kerfuffle has thrown up for the public’s glare, the deep divisions within the literary community.
Now, consider if Nigeria’s elite had been making endowments like Carnegie (and Alfred Nobel, and John Rockefeller) did, rather than remaining five centuries in the past and making the festivals/events/patronage the modern equivalent of Averroes’ toxic march into the intellectual abyss.
CHETA NWANZE
