Between Leonardo and Pico: Ulysses at the crossroads of modernity

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to continue the work that we began in Tra Leonardo e Ficino. Le vie dell’anima e il bivio della conoscenza alla fine del Quattrocento, continuing to explore Massimo Cacciari's indication of the passage-and-break that he identifies between the Ficino and Pico’s Florence, and Bruno, pointing precisely to Leonardo as the embodiment of this caesura. By comparing Leonardo with Pico, in the fundamental theoretical passages of their thoughts with respect to the relation of Man and his mind to the natural dimension in which he is thrown and the Principle that animates and/or creates it, we intend to identify the extent and manner in which the passage intuited by Cacciari is consummated in Leonardo, so as to continue the path toward some more adequate studies of Leonardo's thought in the humanistic context – and in particular in the new humanistic studies’ perspectives – of which he is a leading exponent.