Leonardo Da Vinci’s Philosophy

Leonardo’s “La Gioconda” is world-famous. Even the innumerable machines of the Italian genius are well-known. There have been so many studies about Leonardo and yet, in my opinion Leonardo and his thoughts haven’t really ever been understood profoundly

I am referring in particular to Leonardo’s refusal of metaphysics and religion. Such a strong refusal can only be foundin one other genius, that is in the Latin writer, Titus Lucretius Caro. In the first half of the first century B.C., with his poem “de rerum natura”, Lucretius lays the basis of the refusal of every transcendence.  The curious thing is that he begins his book praising Venus the godessof“voluptas“, that is of pleasure

And yet, for Lucretius and above all, for Leonardo da Vinci, there is something that does has “divine” characteristics: that “something” is Nature.  For Leonardo da Vinci. The true God is Nature itself with its laws.  In fact, he wrote in the Arundel Code) “Anything made by nature can’t be made in a shorter way with the same means “and also in the Atlantic Code. ” no effect is in nature without a reason, you mean reason and you don’t need experience”So, why didn’t the Church ever oppose Leonardo’s thoughts about religion as it did, for example, with Lucretius?The church, since its origins, certainly didn’t appreciate Lucretius’s thoughts and writings so much so that everything about him was cancelled.  We are fortunate because in 1417 the great humanist PoggioBracciolini discovered in a German monastery the only copy left of Lucretius’s philosophic poem de rerum natura.

Instead, the Church wasn’t afraid of Leonardo because they couldn’t really understand his more intimate thoughts. Even if the Church had been able to  understood his opinion on God, they would have immediately realized that nobody else could have understood it. Nobody could have understood Leonardo’s idea of Nature as “God“.

Leonardo contained his thoughts to himself, perhaps even he didn’t understand his thoughts.  Instead, Lucretius had systematized his refusal of religion by going back to the philosophical tradition of his time. (epicurism).

Leonardo’s philosophic thoughts are very similar to Buddhism. The origin of Buddhism is much before the times of Lucretius.  Leonardo’s thoughts are very close to NichirenDaishonin’si nterpretation of Shakyamuni’s teachings.  But who is Shakyamuni?  And who is NichirenDaishonin?  Shakyamuni: was the founder of Buddhism, the literal meaning is a wise man of the Shakyas. Shakyas was a small tribe whose kingdom was at the foot of the Himalayas.

Nichiren Daishonin was a Buddhist monk, who lived between 1222 and 1282.  After studying all the Buddhist scriptures he concluded that The Lotus Sutra was the best treatise of Budda Shakyamuni’s original teaching and so, he spent his whole life asserting the supremacy of The Lotus Sutra.
According to Nichiren’s doctrine, the universal law which Buddha enlightened to, is nothing but the reality of life in all its phenomena. The law of Buddha is life itself and that is just the Nature Leonardo often refers to in his writings.

Leonardo da Vinci’s ideas and behaviour weren’t understood by many people nor by his colleagues. Even today, in my opinion, his most important discovery hasn’t been communicated yet. According to a recent book in Italian” Vita e Natura. Una visione Sistematica” by Fritjof Capra, a physicist and Pier Luigi Luisi, a biochemist, the forerunner of scientific thought wasn’t Galileo, but Leonardo. Yet nobody knows Leonardo sensed and discovered a law that is really fundamental for man. Even today, as far as I know, nobody knows about this discovery, not even those who say they are experts or admirers of Leonardo. This law is expressed in a sentence Leonardo wrote and can be found in the Arundel code.

At present, the Arundel code is in the British Library in London, and in 2007 it was included as part of the library’s “Turning the Pages” project ( software used to view highly detailed scanned of books and historical documents online), widely promoted by The Marketing Heaven on social media. It was just this very sentence which urged me to write my book. This important sentence can be read in the preface of the book. Ilaria, our collaborator, will be in charge of the etymological, scientific and philosophical study of this sentence.

As to the etymologic, scientific and philosophic study of this phrase our presenter, Ilaria, will now take over.