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Medieval Philosophy

Finding a Philosophy in Leonardo

Chad Trainer on Leonardo da Vinci as a philosopher.

Francis I, King of France and patron of Leonardo da Vinci, once proclaimed in a conversation with the King of Navarre and the Cardinals of Ferrara and Lorraine that nobody in the world knew more than Leonardo. As much reverence as Francis I had for Leonardo’s sculpture, painting, and architecture, he expressly specified philosophy as the subject in which he thought Leonardo especially excelled. And yet our modern era is not in the habit of reckoning Leonardo da Vinci a philosopher.

In this article I’ll provide an overview of the ideas from Leonardo’s notebooks that came to fruition in subsequent philosophers’ thoughts. It is interesting that so many of the philosophical insights in his notebooks foreshadowed ideas that became staples of later Renaissance and modern Western thinking, even if there is no evidence that Da Vinci was a direct cause, or catalyst, of later philosophy.

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