Leonardo and ethical ideal

Leonardo da Vinci occupies a weird place in history. He is one of the most famous men the world has ever known, but even within his own time and place—Renaissance Italy—he was not considered the best artist: his fellow Ninja Turtles Michelangelo and Raphael have more masterpieces, and are considered his artistic superiors. But Leonardo’s fame goes beyond being an artist, although that’s what his claim to fame is. He is kind of an untouchably genius figure who seems superhuman, and yet he speaks to our present moment, perhaps more than Michelangelo or Raphael, because he started so many projects that he never finished. He left behind endless notebooks with ideas, sketches, and plans for projects—almost none of which were ever completed. It’s not that he had anything like ADHD, he was just always going on to the next thing. He wanted to capture something essential about reality, as fully as possible—and everything he did was part of this overall project. The spirit moved him in different directions, to complete this overall goal—and sometimes that meant moving on from one project, to start another, which would, at the time, allow him to more perfectly pursue his goal. This is how everyone is today—constantly starting things, usually not finishing them. This usually leaves us with a bad conscience—that we ought to be finishing the little projects we start. But Leonardo gave no indication of this bad conscience—he simply dutifully followed the spirit whenever and wherever it moved him, rather than stubbornly trying to complete whatever project he had started.

What else can we learn from him?

Serenity and high activity: Leonardo was an artist of a different type than Michelangelo. Michelangelo was all about passion, upheavals of emotion that manifested in Michelangelo’s sublime, powerful art. Leonardo operated more from a kind of serenity, rather than thundering passion—but it was a sort of serenity balanced with relentless, high activity. Generally the kind of productivity that Leonardo had comes from a manic place, or a highly impassioned place—but with Leonardo there’s no indication of this. The highest possible productivity, coming from a perfectly balanced place. Usually serenity and high activity do not go together—you are either Zen, detached, etc., or you are working constantly in a frenzy. Leonardo was able to be insanely productive, but to also keep a sense of perfect serenity.

Cultivated blindness: On the question of balancing his strict scientific mind with Christianity, Leonardo did not see this as a problem at all. He was able to cultivate the most advanced scientific worldview anyone ever has, in a heavily religious atmosphere, and not experiencing (or giving any sign of) any friction with Christianity. To him it was simply not a problem—he developed a kind of cultivated, intentional blindness to the incompatibility of science with religion. There was no reason for them to be in conflict—they could complement each other. Being ale to not see problems as problems is an important skill.

Universal specialization: The whole world was Leonardo’s specialty—he specialized in every area. He was an expert in every blood vessel, every sinew, every strand of hair, every crease in the human face—every type of mechanization possible at the time (and imagined many more that were not yet possible but would become possible). He merged big picture and details seamlessly—usually people are either Big Picture Guys, who don’t care about little details, or are more detail-oriented and can’t see the bigger picture. Leonardo was both, always—he operated according to a kind of ethical imperative to specialize in everything. This is similar to Hegel’s aim to know everything, to develop a rational schema of the universe—but not in a purely speculative, philosophical sense; rather, a comprehensive knowledge of the universe, from concrete perception of everything in the universe. Knowing everything in the universe by starting from the smallest detail and building from there—that was his goal, and it’s the only way to have the most complete knowledge. This was his ideal, and it’s a much higher ideal and standard than we see in science or art today (the two of which Leonardo blended seamlessly).