Per un lessico politico di Leonardo da Vinci. II. Indizi di polemologia: “naturalità” del conflitto e “necessarietà” della guerra
Résumé
The second instalment of my exploration of Leonardo’s political lexicon deals with the theme of warfare, as documented by two different, but interrelated, series of tests. The analysis concerns, on the one hand, Leonardo’s anthropology and cosmolo- gy, highlighting his ideal of naturalness in politics, especially with regard to the notion that conflict is the inevitable concomitant of all human relationships. On the other hand, I discuss Leonardo’s involvement in the military arts and his attempt to explain and justify war as a means of preserving the liberty of a state, in order to illustrate his idea of the necessity of war in certain circumstances. The final aim of the article is to propose a way of reconciling Leonardo’s activity as a military engineer and architect with his own undoubted pacifism.