Leonardo da Vinci, Mona Lisa, example

Precision about the idea of perfection

The humanity is destined to reach its perfection

Following their own interest, the men make the history and are at the same time utensils and means of something higher and vaster, that they ignore but accomplish in an unconscious way – Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. The purpose of this reflection is exactly to make clearer this “something higher and vaster” than we carry out intuitively.

Before going further into the first chapters of our philosophy, we would like to explain some specific terms. When we write: "Humanity is destined to reach its perfection", it does not mean that our specie is imperfect during the time of its construction but simply that it has not reached its "perfection point” yet.

The perfection is a strange paradox.

Definitely, the humanity is always perfect at present while being perfectible. It is perfect in the way that it cannot be the different from what it is, it cannot be more advanced than what it is (only our imagination, our regrets or our desires let us believe the opposite). And nevertheless, the humanity is also perfectible, as far as it changes from day to day, and, to our mind, it moves on (even if a few pieces of our evolution sometimes have to decline). Therefore, it is always much more perfect than yesterday and much less than tomorrow. It would be righter to write: “Humanity is destined to reach its ultimate perfection”.

Mona Lisa of Leonardo Da Vinci

We can compare the evolution of humanity with the slow elaboration of a work of art. Let us imagine for example, that an individual, having absolutely no experience of painting, had an opportunity in 1503, to be in the studio of Leonardo da Vinci, in the presence of the very first sketch of Mona Lisa.

What would he have thought in front of these few bizarre lines, scattered here and there on the canvas? He would credibly have thought he was in the presence of a simple and meaningless scrawl, without future or importance.

This uninitiated man would have been incapable of conceiving the future of this sketch. He would have been incapable of representing itself the final result, of imagining the completion of this preliminary work and of foreseeing its importance for the humanity. Nevertheless, these few scattered lines were fundamental for the masterpiece. Every charcoal drawing, every regret, every doubt, every error and every rectification operated by Leonardo da Vinci, were essential for the creation of Mona Lisa.

The finished portrait, wrote Henri Bergson, explains by the face of the model, by the nature of the artist, by the colors diluted on the palette; but, even with the knowledge of what explains it, nobody, even the artist, had been able to foresee exactly what would be the portrait, because to foresee it had been to create it before it is created, absurd hypothesis which annuls itself. It is the same concerning the moments of our life, the architects of which we are. Each of these moments is a sort of creation. And as well as the talent of the painter forms or deforms, at least modifies, under the influence of the works which it produces, so each of our states, at the same time as it comes out from us, modifies our person, being the new nature which we have just given ourselves.

In other words: Every moment, every stage in the execution of a work of art, is perfect in the present, while being perfectible.

Humanity is a masterpiece

One day the man will grasp the work which he elaborates

Quite as a work of artrequires a set of stages before becoming the final work wished by his creator, the humanity needed all the previous stages) to become what it is.

All our past stages were necessary to transform the natural primate whom we were into the man whom we became. All the phases of construction - prehistory, history, formation of cities, of empires, religions, etc. - all the periods of wars, peace, terrors and serenity, cannot be deducted from what made what we are.

Even if it is necessary to fight the negative acts of the humanity and to judge some past events as if they were "useless” and “superfluous"…actually, all were inevitable.
The only dramas, in which the humanity can really get involved, are the ones of our present and those of our future.

Quite as the "errors" and the rectifications of the Tuscan painter were essential of the masterpiece of the Louvre Museum, the "errors" of humanity are an integral part of its evolution to the ultimate perfection.

Every moment of the slow evolution of our specie is always perfect - because it cannot be different from that it is in the present - while being perfectible, because it is followed by moments of superior evolution.

In the absolute, we would thus have no right to criticize the slowness of the human evolution, quite as we have no right to blame a child for not being an adult yet, or to blame Leonardo da Vinci for not managing to paint his Mona Lisa without taking the preparatory phases into account.

However, we are not in the absolute, but in reality. And in the reality, the guile of the reason is at its height. Through the guile of the reason, the humanity is under an obligation to judge its past, even if this past could not occur in another way than it occurred. It is a necessity. The man inevitably has to criticize all the "bad" actions of his past to keep away from commit them again. The man has to consider the world imperfect such as it is, to have the aspiration to change it.

The human disappointment is one of engines of our progress. It obliges us to improve permanently the society, what, by declension, guides gradually the human society to its ultimate "perfection". Quite as a man has to judge his past and present "errors" to progress, the humanity has to judge its past and present "errors" to evolve to its ultimate perfection..

The consciousness of the maturity

humanity is evolving all by itself towards its destiny, but we must have the illusion of being the authors of this evolution. Jean marc Tonizzo.

Each of our baby's falls, each of our youthful mistakes, make us become the adult we are. If the fate and the contemplation are the natural children of the absolute awakening, the dissatisfaction and the resistance are the natural mothers of the evolution. The feeling of dissatisfaction has credibly been very present during all the years of the learning of Leonardo da Vinci. As every artist, the genius of Florence was doubtless very critical to himself until he reached the full control of his art.

In the same way, we must be very critical to the "mistakes" of the humanity. Only on this condition we can ameliorate our present and our future.

In a way, the evolution of the humanity looks like that of an individual: birth, babyhood, childhood, adolescence, adulthood, maturity and wisdom, seem to characterize its big stages. Inside this process, it seems to me, we can notice other similarities with the evolution of the living.

In fact, quite as the young dominant people always eventually take the dominant’s place) renewing the system, the young societies dethrone and modernize the more ancient societies. It was the case for Egyptians, Hebrew, Mesopotamians, Persians, Greek, Macedonians, the Etruscan, Romans, etc. These new principles used the Christianity, the Islam, recent Europe, and America. The same system obviously applies to Asian societies and civilizations (Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Zen, India, China, Japan etc.).

But quite as the son always eventually preserves the best values of the father, the societies change while keeping the best of the previous societies. That is why, today, we have the best of the Egyptian societies (the geometry, the writing, the beginning of the laws, the monotheism etc.) the best of the Hebrew world (the moral laws, the sacred books etc.) Greek societies (the democracy, the philosophy, the history) the best of the Roman societies, etc.

If the new societies, by being imperative itself on the ancient, allow to transcend the old structures, to renew the systems, to improve in a sense of the humanity, they also have the failings of their youth. Pride, egocentricity, aggressiveness, taste for the destruction, the deafness in others, are a part of these very visible failings today with the American hegemony.

At this level, the comparison between the current human society and the Tuscan painter, changes dimension.

In fact, if Leonardo, at the time of Mona Lisa, had reached a level of consciousness and technique being enough for previewing, in a sense, the result of the work which he was realizing, the humanity did not arrive yet at this stage of understanding. Globally, our specie has not still clearly become aware of what it elaborates.

In a metaphoric way, we could imagine the present humanity in the middle of a crisis of adolescence, discovering its real reason for living. It is completely normal; before understanding, we do not understand! It is about a normal stage of the evolution of the consciousness, about the evolution to the wisdom.

Leonardo da Vinci knew obviously a similar stage.

It was a time when the Tuscan artist did not know anything about his future vocation, when he did not know that he would become the artist we know. This stage of unconsciousness was also necessary for his construction.

Towards a new teleology

Cry to study scientifically the purpose of the humanity, is going to become, in my opinion, one of the big stakes in the sciences and in the future philosophies. The contribution of the philosophers in this teleological quest was already enormous.

From Kant to Hegel, from Marx to Nietzsche, many thinkers gave their life to try to resolve the question of the human future.

Since the end the last world war, this reflection seems to have been abandoned for the benefit of the questions dealing with the immediate, with the quest of the personal happiness and with the contemporary social and economic political interests.

Obviously, this interest for the psychological field, introduced by Sigmund Freud, is fundamental for the human evolution. He permits to understand "whom we are", helps us to correct our tendencies and our overflowing, but does not allow to know "where we go".

The knowledge of the hidden recesses of the human soul is obviously an effort to continue. Indeed, it is vital for the evolution of the humanity to go further and further into the human sciences: the psychology, the ethology, the sociology. But it seems to me, at the same time, necessary to re-interest ourselves in the teleology, in the eschatology and in the philosophy of history. It seems to me time again today, to resume these studies where our big predecessors left them.

Why, spiritually speaking, our specie appeared? What deep senses take on its specificities? And which objective the humanity in general seems to follow, are inevitable questions today.

We shall try hard to answer these questions throughout these chapters. We do not claim to bring here an original and innovative concept or new ideas forgotten by the great adventure of the mystic and the philosophy... Most of the big keys about our purpose were discovered by the uncountable enlightened spirits appeared throughout our history (from the Bible until Hegel). But these propositions are not "indisputable enough" to be chosen by the whole humanity as a guide of destination to be followed.

A universal purpose must be beforehand studied and confirmed by the science, it is the only means for it to be accepted by all. We are thus still far enough from this universal awareness which will doubtless happen completely naturally… The claims of our naive, simplistic and synthetic vision are limited. We just would like to add some new candles on a road already opened and drawn by the biggest adventurers of the philosophy, the science and the mystic.

If we simply succeed in putting in light their work and in stimulating future reflections, our objective will then have reached its purpose

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