philosophy of history. Specifically, he was the first to take
seriously the possibility that people had fundamentally different
schema of thought in different historical eras. Thus, Vico became the
first to chart a course of history that depended on the way the
structure of thought changed over time.
To illustrate the difference between modern thought and ancient
thought, Vico developed a remarkable theory of the imagination. This
theory led to an account of myth based on ritual and imitation that
would resemble some twentieth century anthropological theories. He
also developed an account of the development of human institutions
that contrasts sharply with his contemporaries in social contract
theory. Vico's account centered on the class struggle that prefigures
nineteenth and twentieth century discussions.
Vico did not achieve much fame during his lifetime or after.
Nevertheless, a wide variety of important thinkers were influenced by
Vico's writings. Some of the more notable names on this list are
Johann Gottfried von Herder, Karl Marx, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, James
Joyce, Benedetto Croce, R. G. Collingwood and Max Horkheimer.
References to Vico's works can be found in the more contemporary
writings of Jürgen Habermas, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Alasdair MacIntyre
and many others.
There is no question that his work is difficult to grasp. Vico's style
is challenging. Further, he is heavily influenced by a number of
traditions that many philosophers may find unfamiliar: the natural law
tradition of thinkers like Grotius; the Roman rhetorical tradition of
authors like Quintillian; and the current science and anthropology of
his day. Nevertheless, Vico's theories on culture, language, politics
and religion are deeply insightful and have excited the imaginations
of those who have read him.
1. Vico's Life
Giambattista Vico was born in a small room above his father's bookshop
on the Via San Biagio dei Librai in the old center of Naples on June
23rd, 1668 . His family was poor, and Giambattista was the sixth of
eight children (Auto 215-6). Vico recounts that at the age of seven he
fell from the top of a ladder, probably in his father's bookshop, and
seriously injured his head. He had to spend three years recovering
from the injury (Auto 111), and for most of his life he complained of
bouts of ill health.
Upon his recovery, Vico studied scholastic philosophy and
jurisprudence. He worked with a number of Jesuit tutors, but as he
grew older he taught himself these traditions (Auto 118). From 1686 to
1695, Vico worked as a tutor for the Rocca family in Vatolla,
approximately 100 kilometers from Naples. During this time, he gave up
his study of scholastic philosophy, and concentrated on the study of
Plato and poets such as Virgil, Dante and Petrarch (Auto 120-2). Vico
depicts these years as a time when he lived in isolation and during
which Naples was overrun by Cartesian scientists (Auto 132). However,
Vico was in contact with Naples during this period, and he completed
his law degree during this time.
In 1699, Vico became a professor of rhetoric at the University of
Naples, a position he held until 1741. He also married and later had
three children. In 1709, Vico published his first major work On the
Study Methods of Our Time which was a defense of humanistic education.
This was followed in 1710 by his work on metaphysics: On the Ancient
Wisdom of the Italians Unearthed From the Origins of the Latin
Language. This was intended to be the first part of a trilogy
including a volume on physics and a volume on moral philosophy.
However, he never completed the remaining volumes. During this period,
Vico recognized four authors as his most important influences: Plato,
Tacitus, Grotius and Bacon.
Vico's job as a professor of rhetoric was primarily to prepare
students for law school; however, he desired to be promoted to the
superior position of professor of law. To achieve this goal, he
published his longest work, in three volumes, from 1720 to 1722,
generally referred to as Universal Law (Il Diritto Universale).
However, due to political circumstances, he was defeated in the
contest for the chair, despite having superior credentials and doing
better in the oral competition for the job (Auto 163-4).
Vico then abandoned his search for a chair of law and dedicated
himself to explicating his own philosophy. To reach a wider audience,
he began to write in Italian instead of Latin. In 1725 he published
the first edition of his major work, New Science. Vico was
dissatisfied with that text, however, and in 1730 published a
radically different second edition. He continued to revise that text
throughout his later years and the variation that was published in
1744 is considered his definitive work.
Vico sent copies of his works to influential thinkers in other parts
of Europe. While he had little success achieving fame in the north, he
did make a large impact in Venice. In 1725, Vico was contacted by a
Venetian journal that was going to publish a series of essays written
by scholars about their lives; he was the first and only contributor
to the series. He updated his essay a few times and had it published
as his Autobiography.
Vico did have some political influence in his later years. In 1734
Naples was retaken by the Spanish from the Austrians who had ruled it
from 1704. The new viceroy named Vico the Royal Historiographer of
Naples. Due to failing health, Vico's son Gennaro took his chair of
rhetoric in 1741 and Giambattista Vico died in 1744.
2. Early Works
a. Vico as Anti-Cartesian and Anti-Enlightenment
Vico is rightfully cast as a counter-Enlightenment thinker. In the
face of the Enlightenment emphasis on doing natural science through
the search for clear and distinct ideas, Vico saw himself as a
defender of rhetoric and humanism. Many of Vico's ideas are most
easily grasped through a contrast with Cartesian rationalism and
specifically Descartes' emphasis on the geometric method. However, it
is unclear exactly the extent to which Vico disagreed with the overall
project of the Enlightenment. In a number of respects, Vico engaged in
the same type of philosophical investigations as other
eighteenth-century thinkers. He calls his main work a 'science', and
claims Bacon as a major influence. Vico searched for a universal
mental dictionary, and his science may be seen as its own type of
encyclopedia. Further, recent scholarship suggests that Vico was
heavily influenced by Malebranche. So while there is absolutely no
question that Vico remains a staunch defender of ancient rhetoric, how
much of the rest of the Enlightenment he rejects is a question.
The main debate between Vico and Descartes is over the value of the
imagination and of rhetoric. In the opening of the Discourse on
Method, Descartes rejects rhetoric and culture as sources of
certainty. This implies, for Descartes, that there really is no value
for these institutions. If one can state an idea clearly, then there
is no need for rhetoric to defend it. While Descartes' view was
probably more subtle than this, as Cartesian science swept into Naples
people began teaching children math and critique at the expense of
training imagination.
Vico would devote most of his writings to stemming this tide by
defending the importance of rhetoric. Vico began this defense in the
Study Methods by claiming that children should develop their
imaginations when they are young. This defense would continue in
different forms until the New Science when Vico articulated the poetic
wisdom which is an entire way of thinking based on the imagination and
rhetoric. These points will be articulated below.
b. On the Study Methods of Our Time
As professor of rhetoric, Vico was required to give inaugural orations
each academic year. His first six orations are an extended defense of
the study of virtue and the liberal arts; these orations have been
translated and given the title On Humanistic Education. The seventh
oration was expanded by Vico and published by him as a small book
entitled On the Study Methods of Our Time. The subject of the work was
to determine the best method by which to educate people: the Ancient
method that emphasizes rhetoric and imagination; or the Cartesian
method that emphasizes conceptual thought. His conclusion is that both
methods are important (SM 6). However, because Vico actually defends
the value of the Ancient method against the Cartesian method (which
rejects the value of the ancient tradition), this work is seen as a
cornerstone of Vico's counter-Enlightenment stance.
Vico defines a study method as having three parts. The instruments are
the systematic order by which the course of study progresses. The aids
are the tools one would use along the course of study such as the
books to read. The aims are the goals of the study (SM 6-8).
Vico spends the majority of the work criticizing the modern
instruments of learning in favor of the ancient ones. The modern
Cartesian method teaches the method of philosophical critique which
concentrates on teaching students how to find error and falsity in
one's thinking. The emphasis is on critiquing ideas by finding
weaknesses in their foundation (SM 13).
The ancient instrument is the art of topics. This is the art by which
one uses the imagination to find connections between ideas. This art
shows students how to make new arguments rather than critiquing the
arguments of other people. In Aristotelean logic, it emphasizes
finding middle terms in order to create persuasive syllogisms.
Further, it shows how a speaker can find a connection with an audience
that will make a speech persuasive (SM 14-16).
For Vico, the argumentis over whether to teach children to find faults
with arguments or to create arguments imaginatively; he argues that
both are necessary. However, it is essential to teach children the art
of topics first. This is because children have naturally strong
imaginations. This needs to be developed early. After the children
have developed these strong imaginations, then they can learn
Cartesian critique (SM 13-14).
Vico suggests it is vital to develop the imagination of children
because imagination is essential for doing ethics. The Cartesian
method is effective in those instances where geometric certainty may
be found. However, in most ethical situations, this certainty will not
be possible. In these cases, the art of topics is vital because it
allows one to recognize the best course of action and persuade others
to pursue that course. Prudent individuals are those who can use their
imaginations to uncover new ways of looking at a situation rather than
critiquing a pre-existing belief. So the imagination and the art of
topics are vital for prudence in a way that the Cartesian method
cannot satisfy (SM 33-34). This is Vico's first attempt to defend the
power of rhetoric against Descartes.
c. On the Ancient Wisdom of the Italians Unearthed from the Origins of
the Latin Language
i. The Verum-Factum Principle
Perhaps the greatest significance of the Ancient Wisdom lies in its
presentation of the verum-factum principle. This and the ideal eternal
history are Vico's two most famous ideas. The verum-factum principle
holds that one can know the truth in what one makes. Vico writes, "For
the Latins, verum (the true) and factum (what is made) are
interchangeable, or to use the customary language of the Schools, they
are convertible (Ancient Wisdom 45)."
This presents a serious challenge to Cartesian science. The Cartesians
had always assumed that the natural world provided certain ideas while
the human world — the world of culture — was uncertain. This principle
turns that around. Because God made the natural world, only God can
know it. Humans can understand the human world because humans made it.
This provides the foundation for the New Science since it suggests
that the true focus of science should be the human world not the
natural world.
While Vico couches this in an etymology, he does provide another
justification for it. Descartes famously used "I think therefore I am"
to provide a first principle that refutes skepticism. Vico claims that
this does not work because it does not entirely address the challenge
of the skeptics. The skeptic knows that he or she exists. The skeptic
does not, however, know anything significant about that existence
because the skeptic cannot know the cause of his or her ideas (AW 55).
The verum-factum principle solves the skeptic's problem by explaining
that since we are the cause of what we make, we can know what was
made. Since humans have made the civil world, they can understand the
cause of the civil world and know the truth about it. Thus the
skeptic, who claims knowledge is impossible, is incorrect because it
is possible to know the truth about what humans have made. For Vico,
making something becomes the criteria for knowing the truth about it
(AW 56).
It is important to note that Vico does not appear to hold that the
only truth humans can know is of what humans make. Especially in his
later writings, Vico holds that through the world humans make, humans
can witness eternal truths such as the ideal eternal history and the
verum-factum principle itself. The verum-factum principle ought to be
read in conjunction with the verum/certum principle outlined in the
Universal Law and discussed below (Verene, 1981, 56-7).
ii. Metaphysical Points and the Attack on Cartesian Stoicism
The majority of the Ancient Wisdom is spent on a metaphysics that
culminates in Vico's idea of metaphysical points. Vico regarded
Descartes as a stoic who held a mechanistic view of the universe.
Descartes himself was a dualist; however, Vico is looking at the
Cartesian scientists who followed Descartes and saw in them an
abandonment of any ultimate truth as well as a reduction of existence
to the motion of bodies. Vico links this metaphysical view to the
ethical stoic view that deemphasizes both freedom and the hope of
finding transcendent wisdom. He argues for a dualistic view that
establishes a strong separation between the physical and eternal. This
allows for a Platonic ethics which calls for philosophers to move from
the physical to witnessing a higher realm.
In the Ancient Wisdom, Vico tries to justify this separation by
arguing that the physical world cannot move itself. The only source of
motion is not found in the physical but in the infinite. The infinite
lacks motion but can provide motion to the world through metaphysical
points, those places in which the infinite provides motion (conatus)
to the physical. Vico again provides a fanciful etymology for this,
claiming that the Latin words for point and momentum were synonymous
since both refer to indivisible entities (AW 69). While Vico attacks
Descartes' stoicism throughout his writings, it is unclear to what
extent Vico retains to this particular metaphysical view.
iii. Vico's Use of Etymology
The Ancient Wisdom is one of Vico's first major attempts to use
etymology as a philosophical tool. Vico claims that by understanding
the origin of words, it is possible to understand an ancient wisdom
that has valuable insight. In the Ancient Wisdom, this insight is into
metaphysical truth. In the later works, these etymologies reveal the
nature of human laws and customs. He often takes the names of
mythological gods or Roman legal terms and uses them to derive lessons
from the origins of these words. This use of etymology is consistent
with Vico's overriding goal of demonstrating that ancient wisdom is
valuable and requires careful attention on the part of the reader.
These etymologies are almost always extremely problematic given later
research that has been done on the origin of languages, which
undercuts Vico's interpretation. This presents a serious problem for
people trying to find philosophical merit in Vico's texts. However,
two things are worth keeping in mind when looking at Vico's
etymologies and his later analysis of myth. First, Vico usually
provides other forms of demonstration to make his points rather than
just relying on etymology. Their failure rarely represents a serious
undermining of the entire system. Second, Vico is trying to do
philosophy in a new way that involves making connections rather than
making Cartesian distinctions. It may be worth engaging these
etymologies to see how Vico imaginatively constructs these connections
without worrying as much about the validity of the etymologies. One
does not want to be too apologetic for Vico; however, there are
reasons for not dismissing his system entirely solely on the basis of
the etymologies.
3. Vico and Jurisprudence
a. The Universal Law (Il Diritto Universale)
The Universal Law has been neglected in Vico scholarship because of
its complexity and because it has only recently been translated into
English. However, its three volumes taken together represent Vico's
longest work: On the One Principle and one End of Universal Law, On
the Constancy of the Jurisprudent and Dissertations. It is often
referred to as Il diritto universale. This is because the term diritto
signifies a universal structure of law as opposed to legge which
refers to particular laws made by particular individuals. English does
not make this distinction.
The goal of this work is to show that all truth and all law (diritto)
comes from God (On the One Principle 50, 54). Hence, he wants to
demonstrate that there is truly one universal law in history. To do
this, he needs to show that while there are different manifestations
of the one law, they are all reducible to the one eternal law. He is
not concerned with how one particular law (legge) may or may not fit
the system, because there will be instances where bad judges make bad
decisions. However, this does not mean that all law (diritto) is
arbitrary. Indeed, Vico holds that there is still a consistency to
history that reveals how God's divine providence orchestrates the
enactment of the natural law through the civil law.
The majority of the work consists in trying to understand the ways in
which different societies in history enacted the eternal law
differently. He does this through fanciful etymologies and extended
interpretations of Roman law. This work has many of the same
characteristics of the New Science but lacks a full explanation of the
poetic wisdom underlying ancient myths.
b. The Verum/Certum Principle
The essential companion to the verum-factum principle is the
verum/certum principle. Vico writes, "The certain is part of the true
(On the One Principle 90)." This, as much as the verum-factum
principle, represents Vico's attitude toward history. By certain, Vico
means the particular facts of history. So the principle is saying that
by looking at particular facts of history, it is possible to discover
universal truth. This principle justifies Vico's use of philological
and historical evidence to make metaphysical claims.
Not all certa are part of the true, however. Because humans are free,
they can make bad choices. So legislators are capable of passing bad
laws as well as good laws. When a choice is made contrary to reason, a
certum occurs that does not connect with universal truth (On the One
Principle 90). At other times, these laws are rational and therefore
part of the true. So when the philosopher tries to deduce the verum
from the certum, the primary difficulty is in establishing which certa
represent rational and true choices and which are bad certa and ought
to be disregarded.
Vico sees laws as being rational when they are in accord with public
utility (On the One Principle 91). A legislator's laws are certain not
because of a direct insight into the mind of God; rather, divine
providence orchestrates history such that when legislators make
decisions they find useful, they are unknowingly doing the work of
divine providence (On the One Principle 65). In order to understand
the eternal law, then, one has to first understand the necessity that
different legislators faced through history. By understanding their
responses one can see the motion of divine providence. So Vico does
not grasp universal truth through a direct analysis of God's will but
rather by analyzing the way in which necessity led legislators to
produce the institutions of history.
c. The Natural Law and the Law of the Gentes
Vico defines the natural law by writing "the natural law proceeds from
choosing the good that you know to be equitable (On the One Principle
66)." This law does not change; however, the way in which utility
constitutes what it means to be equitable does change. Early in human
history it is more equitable to give the rulers more power and more
wealth to control the weak. As the need for this control lessens,
wealth becomes distributed more evenly.
At the origin of humanity, there were families in which the fathers
used violence and religious ritual to control their children. While
the private law of the fathers was harsh, it gave stability to the
families. These fathers were independent of each other and had no
reason to fight. All the violence was directed internally in order to
control their children.
Eventually, wandering people who did not have their own families and
did not have anything checking their passions, wanted to benefit from
the protection of the fathers. This created a practical problem for
the fathers because they wanted to use the stragglers for their own
ends but were afraid of revolution. Fathers from different families
banded together to create the law of the greater gentes — clans or
tribes — as a way of suppressing the newcomers (On the One Principle
97). Again, the fathers, who now constitute an aristocracy of nobles
or heroes, are not particularly worried about fighting each other;
they were worried primarily about controlling this new lower class of
people.
Two things are of immediate significance in Vico's account. First,
Vico makes a strong connection between public law and private law.
Indeed, the private law of the families leads to the public law of the
nobles. Second, Vico is making an important case against social
contract theory. Rather than society forming by an agreement of all
its members, society is formed by the aristocrats who then, out of a
sense of utility, impose a violent rule. Social contract theory does
not make sense for Vico because it would take humans a long time to
develop the ability to reason through such an agreement.
Much of the rest of Vico's Universal Law explains history as an
extended class struggle between the heroes who descended from the
first fathers and the plebeians who descended from those who wandered
into the gentes. Vico examines at length both ancient Roman myths and
ancient Roman jurisprudence to show how utility, generated through the
work of divine providence, directed this struggle. The detail with
which Vico engages in this project is extraordinary. It is significant
that Vico is unclear as to how this class struggle ends. He praises
the Romans for their sense of virtue and the Law of the XII Tables (On
the Constancy 257-276). However, what this means for the course of
history is left unclear. Vico would not present his answer to this
until he wrote the New Science.
4. The New Science
a. The Conceit of Nations and the Conceit of Scholars
The main problem Vico saw with the Universal Law is that it failed to
portray clearly the origin of society. To grasp that origin, Vico
developed a new critical art to reveal how the most ancient humans
thought. This art rested on recognizing two conceits. Both of these
conceits can be traced to a principle which Vico finds in Tacitus:
"Because of the indefinite nature of the human mind, whenever it is
lost in ignorance man makes himself the measure of all things (NS
120)." This axiom not only serves as a basis for these conceits but
also the whole of poetic wisdom.
The conceit of nations holds that every nation thinks it is the oldest
in the world and that all other nations derived their wisdom from them
(NS 125). Because one nation does not understand the origin of others,
it assumes all other nations learned from it. This conceit prevents
nations from realizing that every nation actually had its own
independent origin. Thus, they fail to realize that similarities
between cultures do not indicate a common origin but instead indicate
universal institutions that are necessary for all cultures.
The conceit of scholars is that scholars tend to assume that everyone
thinks in the same way that contemporary scholars do (NS 127). This
conceit has kept scholars from understanding both ancient mythology
and ancient jurisprudence. By assuming the ancients thought the same
way as moderns do, the scholars assume that ancient mythology is
simply bad science and superstition. What the modern scholars fail to
grasp is that the ancients actually were solving different problems in
a radically different mental framework. The ancients were doing what
they found to be useful; however, their way of thinking indicated
radically different ideas of what was necessary and how to get it.
It is the conceit of scholars that thus provides the basis for the
claim that Vico was the first true philosopher of history and an
anticipation of Hegel. He was the first to try to explain how people
thought differently in different eras. Further, he tries to show how
one form of thinking led into another, thereby creating a cycle of
history.
b. The New Critical Art and the Poetic Wisdom
In order to overcome the prejudice of the conceit of scholars, Vico
created a new "metaphysical art of criticism (NS348)." This art goes
beyond the philological art of criticism which simply verifies the
authenticity of particular facts. This new art distinguishes the truth
in history from the accidental — as dictated by the verum-certum
principle — by grasping the manner in which the first humans thought.
This will allow the philosopher to witness the universal truth of the
ideal eternal history, described below. While Vico does not clearly
define this critical art, it is marked by elements he has always been
working with: using rhetoric, creative etymologies and seeing
connections rather than making distinctions.
The art reveals the way the first humans thought, which Vico calls
'poetic wisdom'. Vico uses the term wisdom to emphasize that this way
of thinking has its own truth or validity that contemporary conceptual
thinkers do not recognize. It is poetic because it is marked by
imaginative creativity rather than discursive analysis.
Vico holds that poetic wisdom is fundamentally different from modern
wisdom. The fundamental difference between the two is that modern
wisdom uses reflection to create concepts while the poetic wisdom does
not reflect but spontaneously generates imaginative universals which
are described below. The poetic wisdom generates a common sense that
is shared by an entire peoples (NS 142).
c. Vico's Method
Vico places his new critical art in the context of a more general
method for his New Science. The section of the New Science entitled
'Method' is a sharp departure from any sort of Cartesian science. It
in no way involves the rigorous and clear movement from premises to
conclusions advocated by Descartes. Instead, Vico describes three
different types of proofs that will be employed by the science: 1)
theological proofs which witness the movement of divine providence; 2)
philosophical proofs which are based on the uniformity of poetic
wisdom; and 3) philological proofs which recognize certain elements of
history. These proofs rely more on recognizing the way in which ideas
have to fit together to reveal hidden or divine patterns. The method
of the science is to bring all these proofs together in a way that
produces a coherent and true narrative. Vico writes, "We make bold to
affirm that he who meditates this Science narrates to himself this
ideal eternal history so far as he himself makes it for himself by
that proof 'it had, has, and will have to be' (NS 348)." Rather than a
Cartesian conceptual scheme, Vico's science is one in which truth is
attained by imaginatively linking different elements together to
reveal the order of history.
An important example of the method of the New Science is revealed in
Vico's use of axioms (degnità). Traditionally, axioms have a fixed
place in the order of geometric proofs following directly from
definitions and proofs. Vico intends his axioms to be weaved
imaginatively throughout all the ideas of the text (Goetsch). Vico
describes this with this analogy, "just as the blood does in animate
bodies, so will these elements (degnità) course through our Science
and animate it (NS 199)."
d. The Ideal Eternal History
While the conceit of scholars may be what is at the core of Vico's
significance, the ideal eternal history is, along with the
verum-factum principle, Vico's most famous concept. The ideal eternal
history can be thought of loosely as a Platonic ideal. Stated in the
abstract, the ideal eternal history is the perfect course through
which all nations pass. In practice, each nation travels through it
slightly differently.
Vico describes this ideal eternal history most colorfully when he
gives this axiom: "Men first felt necessity, then look for utility,
next attend to comfort, still later amuse themselves with pleasure,
thence grow dissolute in luxury, and finally go mad and waste their
substance (NS 241)." It is possible in the quote to see the same
emphasis on utility that Vico had in the Universal Law. However, what
changes is that this history is now presented clearly as a circular
motion in which nations rise and fall. Nations eternally course and
recourse through this cycle passing through these eras over and over
again.
Vico divides the ideal eternal history into three ages which he adopts
from Varro. Vico first used these three ages in the Universal Law but
now he presents it with more clarity. Indeed, Book IV of the New
Science is a comparison of how different human institutions existed
differently in the three ages of history. Clearly the history of Rome
is again Vico's primary model for the ideal eternal history.
The first age is the age of gods. In this age, poetic wisdom is very
strong. Again, there is an aristocracy of fathers who know how to
control themselves and others through religion. These fathers, which
Vico calls theological poets, rule over small asylums and the famuli
who are wandering outsiders who come to them seeking protection. The
famuli is the term Vico now uses for those who wandered into the lands
of the fathers in the Universal Law.
The second age is the age of heroes. In this age, the famuli transform
from being simple slaves to plebeians who want some of the privileges
of the rulers. The theological poets transform into heroes. These
heroes show their strength by fighting each other as illustrated in
Homer. However, for Vico, the most important conflict is not between
the heroes but between the heroes and the plebeians fighting for their
own privileges.
The third age is the age of humans. Divine providence orchestrates the
class wars so that the heroes inadvertently undermine themselves by
conceding certain powers to the plebeians. The plebeians are able to
build these concessions in order to advance a new way of thinking. In
the previous ages, society was ruled by poetic wisdom which controlled
all actions through ritual. In order to undermine the power of these
rituals, the plebeians slowly found ways to assert the power of
conceptual wisdom, which is the ability to think scientifically and
rationally. This way of thinking gives the plebeians more power and
removes the stranglehold of poetic wisdom on humanity.
Unfortunately, while this conceptual wisdom gives the plebeians their
freedom, it undermines the cultural unity provided by poetic wisdom.
While all in society become free and equal, the religious inspiration
to work for the common good rather than the individual becomes lost.
Society eventually splinters into a barbarism of reflection in which
civil wars are fought solely for personal gain. This is the barbarism
of reflection which returns society to its origin.
One of the major debates about the ideal eternal history is whether it
is a circle or a spiral. Those who suggest that it is a spiral hold
that each time a nation goes through the ideal eternal history, it
improves. Those who suggest it is a circle hold that each cycle of the
ideal eternal history really does reduce it back to its beginning.
Unfortunately, this appears to be an instance where Vico had to remain
silent because, had he tried to resolve the issue, he would have had
to make some sort of comment on the relation of the church to society
which he was not prepared to do. As a result, the debate about how
best to read the ideal eternal history continues.
e. The New Science and the Roman Catholic Church
It is helpful to note that during Vico's life and especially during
the production of the New Science, the Inquisition was quite active in
Naples. The Inquisition put some Neapolitain works on the Index and
tried close friends of Vico (Bedani, 7-21).
What this means for Vico's faith is unclear; however, it seemed to
cause Vico to make a very important and awkward decision. Vico claims
that while the ideal eternal history applies to all gentile nations,
it does not apply to the Hebrews. This is because the Hebrews always
had the revealed wisdom of God and did not need the pattern of the
ideal eternal history to develop (NS 369). Hence, Vico leaves out any
discussion of the Bible or any evidence about early Judaism as he
constructs his science. As illustrated by The Universal Law, Vico
clearly held that God existed and that it is God's order that history
passes through. So there is good reason to think Vico had a theistic
foundation. It is unclear, however, whether Vico really held that the
Hebrews were exempt from the Ideal Eternal History or if this was just
a way of avoiding the Index.
f. The Three Principles of History: Religion, Marriage and Burial
Vico uses his new critical art to provide a better account of the
origin of society than provided in The Universal Law. Vico explains
the three principles of history: religion, marriage and burial. These
are principles both in the sense that they are the first things in
society and in that they lie at the core of social existence.
Vico posits that before human society there were giants roaming the
earth who had no ability to check their violent passions. Eventually,
a thunder strike occurred that was so violent it caused some of the
giants to stop their passionate wanderings. These giants felt a fear
that was unique because unlike a natural danger, it was produced by a
cause the giants did not recognize (NS 377, 504). Since the giants did
not understand the cause of the fear, other than the sky, they took
what they knew (which was their own passion) and attributed it to a
giant who lived in the sky. This gave birth to Jove, the first
imaginative universal, which is discussed below.
Out of this terror, giants felt shame for the first time.
Specifically, they were ashamed about copulating randomly and out in
the open. Vico writes, "So it came about that each of them would drag
one woman into his cave and would keep her there in perpetual company
for the rest of their lives (NS 504)." This created the second
imaginative universal, Juno. It also caused the giants to settle down
in a particular area. They saw the need to keep this area clean so
they began to bury their dead.
There is no question that this account of the origin of humanity is
peculiar. Nevertheless, Vico finds the account satisfying because it
does not place any rational decision making at the origin of society.
Society does not develop in a social contract but in the spontaneous
checking of passions that produces poetic wisdom.
g. The Imaginative Universal
The bulk of the New Science is the description of Poetic Wisdom. This
is the way of mythic thinkers at the origin of society. It is also the
manner of thinking that dominated society until the plebeians gained
control of society through the class struggle. Vico goes into detail
explaining things such as the poetic metaphysics, poetic logic, poetic
economics and poetic geography. Throughout this section, Vico spells
out the details of the development of the age of gods and then the
breakdown of the age of heroes into the age of humans.
In this section, Vico explains his perhaps most controversial notion:
what he calls the imaginative universals or the poetic characters.
Some scholars, most notably Benedetto Croce, hold that this notion is
a tragic problem on Vico's part and is best ignored. Other scholars
use the imaginative universal as a way to defend Vico as a champion of
the philosophical need to use imagination and rhetoric. Vico himself
saw the imaginative universal as the 'master key' to his New Science
which seems to make the topic worth investigating (NS 34).
The imaginative universals are tricky to grasp, but two fairly
non-contentious axioms can help provide a background. The first is
that first language would be a combination of mute gestures and
rudimentary, monosyllabic words (NS 225, 231). The second is that
"Children excel in imitation; we observe that they generally amuse
themselves by imitating whatever they are able to apprehend (NS 215)."
This is connected to Vico's notion that people grasp what they do not
understand by relating it to something familiar. In the case of
children, they use their powerful imaginations to understand things by
copying their movements.
Vico speculates that the first humans must have had minds that
resembled children. So, when they first started to use language,
rather than naming objects conceptually, they imitated those objects
with mute gestures and monosyllabic cries. Thus, when the thunder
struck, the first people imitated the shaking of the sky and shouted
the interjection pa (father) thereby creating the first word (NS 448).
This makes imaginative universals quite distinct from intelligible
universals. An intelligible universal would be constructed through an
act similar to what we would ordinarily think of as 'naming'. An
imaginative universal is created through the repeated imitation of an
event. Words are merely the associated sound that goes with that
imitation. So, for Vico, the first words were actually rituals that
served as metaphors for events.
A helpful passage for understanding this is found in Axiom XLVII. Vico
writes, "Thence springs this important consideration in poetic theory:
the true war chief, for example, is the Godfrey that Torquato Tasso
imagines; and all the chiefs who do not conform throughout to Godfrey
are not true chiefs of war (NS 205)." The imaginative universal,
Godfrey, is the name used for anyone who performs the rituals of the
true war chief. All true war chiefs actually become Godfrey through
their actions. Vico applies this principle to the gods of the Roman
pantheon. For example, anyone getting married becomes Juno and anyone
practicing divination becomes Apollo. The bulk of the section on the
poetic wisdom in the New Science endeavors to demonstrate how the
first societies managed to create institutions solely through the use
of these imaginative universals.
Many readers find Vico's account of the imaginative universal utterly
baffling. Vico's challenging writing style, combined with the fanciful
way in which he interprets ancient myths, make this section of the New
Science a mystery for first-time readers. However, in approaching this
section, it is helpful to remember that Vico holds that this type of
thinking is by definition distinct from our more common way of
reflective thought. Further, there are contemporary anthropologists
who see Vico as a precursor to their discoveries. Ultimately, Vico's
idea may not really be so far-fetched.
h. The Discovery of the True Homer
Book III of the New Science contains one of Vico's most remarkable
insights. Vico was among the first, if not the first, to hold that
Homer was not one individual writing poems but was a conglomeration of
different poets who expressed the will of the entire people. His
arguments for this are a combination of philological claims which show
that there are many disparate elements in the work, as well as
philosophical claims that when the work was composed, people could not
have been using modern wisdom to write it as a modern epic.
Vico's motivation for this reading of Homer is his quest to find a
metaphysical truth to history. If the works of Homer were written by
one person, then the truths held in it would be arbitrary. However,
Vico argues that Homer's poems spring from the common sense of all the
Greek people. Therefore, the poems represent institutions universal to
a culture that can then be used to justify universal truths. Whereas
in the Universal Law, where Vico examined Roman law to see its
universality, he has now replaced that idea with Homer's poems since
those poems date back earlier than the law.
i. The Barbarism of Reflection
The brief conclusion of the New Science largely pays homage to the
glory of divine providence. Within it, Vico gives a brief statement
about the barbarism of reflection. As indicated in the section on the
Ideal Eternal History, Vico sees that history is cyclical. Vico claims
that history begins in a barbarism of sense and ends in a barbarism of
reflection. The barbarism of reflection is a returned barbarism in
which the common sense established by religion through poetic wisdom
holding a society together has been broken down by individual
interests. The interests are spurred because individuals each think
according to their own conceptual scheme without concern for the
society, which makes it barbaric.
Vico describes the returned barbarism this way, "such peoples [in the
barbarism], like so many beasts, have fallen into the custom of each
man thinking only of his own private interests and have reached the
extreme delicacy, or better of pride, in which like wild animals they
bristle and lash out at the slightest displeasure (NS 1106)." These
private interests lead into a civil war in which everyone betrays
everyone else. This takes humanity back to where it started —
individual giants acting solely on their own individual passions.
Unfortunately, Vico does not give a clear ethical position on what to
do in the face of the barbarism of reflection. He wrote a section of
the New Science called a Practic but decided not to include it.
Clearly, Vico wants his readers to recognize universal truth and
appreciate a rhetorical approach to philosophy. But, what this means
in particular for an ethical theory is a matter of some debate.
5. Autobiography
Vico's Autobiography is worthy of philosophical investigation. It was
written by the invitation of a journal which was going to publish a
series of essays by scholars describing their lives. Vico was the only
one to contribute to the series. The journal was published in 1725 and
he updated it in 1728 and 1731.
On one level, the Autobiography contains the basic facts of his life
recounted above. However, it seems clear that Vico does have an
important philosophical agenda that goes beyond any attempt to recount
simply the facts of his life. The most immediate piece of evidence for
this is that on the first line Vico gets the year of his birth wrong.
He gives it as 1670 rather than 1668. Given how easy it would be to
access his baptism records in Naples, it is entirely possible that
Vico intended his audience to know he was being imprecise, and perhaps
imaginative, when he composed his Autobiography.
One way of reading the Autobiography is as a further attack on
Descartes. The Autobiography itself highlights his conflict with the
Cartesians of Naples. Further, rather than using the first person, as
Descartes does in the Discourse on Method, Vico refers to himself in
the third person. The fact that Vico willfully gets his birth date
wrong could be an indication that he dismisses Descartes' calls for
certainty.
Beyond that, there appear to be strong parallels between Vico's task
in the Autobiography and in the New Science. Returning to the
verum-factum principle, Vico claims that the task of the New Science
is not simply to retell the facts of history. Instead, it is to
understand the workings of divine providence in this history by
remaking it. As quoted above in the section on Method, Vico emphasizes
that to witness the ideal eternal history, the reader must make it for
oneself (NS 349). In saying this, Vico turns the entire New Science
into a text that could be thought of as a type of fable. In the
Autobiography, Vico, rather than giving a strictly accurate account of
his life, makes a fable which actually parallels some elements of the
ideal eternal history. For example, Vico's fall in the bookstore may
parallel the thunderstrike of Jove. Regardless of how strict this
parallel is, Vico appears to be consciously applying some of his
philosophical principles to his Autobiography (Verene 1990).
The Marquis of Villarosa wrote a conclusion to the Autobiography in
1818. He relates an odd story about Vico's funeral. When Vico died,
two groups, the professors at the University of Naples and the
Confraternity of Santa Sophia, both wanted to carry the coffin to its
resting place. A dispute broke out which could not be resolved. As a
result, both sides abandoned the coffin and left. Vico was buried by
officers of the Cathedral the next day (Auto 207-8).
6. References and Further Reading
Italian Editions of Vico
The standard Italian edition of Vico is: Opere di G. B. Vico, ed.
Fausto Nicolini, 8 vols. (Bari: Laterza, 1911-1941). However, two
other editions are being used more regularly. The first is: Vico,
Giambattista. Opere, ed. Andrea Battistini, 2 vols. (Milan: Arnoldo
Mondadori Editore, 1990). The second is a multi-volume edition edited
by Paolo Cristofolini and published by Alfredo Guida under the
auspices of the Instituto per la Storia del Pensiero Filosofico e
Scientifico Moderno and the Centro di Studi Vichiani. This is an
effort to systematically release all the works of Vico.
English Editions of Vico
* The following are the English translations of Vico referred to
in this article.
* Vico, Giambattista. The Autobiography of Giambattista Vico.
Translated by Thomas Goddard Bergin and Max Harold Fisch. Ithaca,
N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1983.
* Vico, Giambattista. The First New Science. Edited and Translated
by Leon Pompa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
* Vico, Giambattista. The New Science of Giambattista Vico (1744
edition). Including the "Practic of the New Science." Translated by
Thomas Goddard Bergin and Max Harold Fisch. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell
University Press, 1984.
* Vico, Giambattista. On Humanistic Education (Six Inaugural
Orations, 1699-1707) from the Definitive Latin Text, Introduction and
Noted of Gian Galeazzo Visconti. Translated by Georgio A. Pinton and
Artuhur W. Shippee. Introduction by Donald Phillip Verene. Ithaca,
N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1993.
* Vico, Giambattista. On the Most Ancient Wisdom of the Italians,
Unearthed from the Origins of the Latin Language. Including the
Disputations with the Giornale de' Letterata d'Italia. Translated with
an Introduction and Notes by L. M. Palmer. Ithaca and London: Cornell
University Press, 1988.
* Vico, Giambattista. On the Study Methods of Our Time. Translated
by Elio Gianturco. Reissued with a Preface by Donald Phillip Verene,
and including "The Academies and the Relation between Philosophy and
Eloquence," Translated by Donald Phillip Verene. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell
University Press, 1990.
* The Universal Law was translated by John D. Schaeffer and
recently published in the following three separate volumes of New Vico
Studies.
* Vico, Giambattista. On the One Principle and One End of
Universal Law. Translated by John D. Schaeffer. New Vico Studies vol.
21, 2003.
* Vico, Giambattista. On the Constancy of the Jurisprudent.
Translated by John D. Schaeffer. New Vico Studies vol. 23, 2005.
* Vico, Giambattista. Dissertations [from the Universal Law].
Translated by John D. Schaeffer. New Vico Studies vol 24, 2006: 1-80.
Other Works Cited
* Bedani, Gino. Vico Revisited: Orthodoxy, Naturalism and Science
in the Scienza Nuova. Oxford: Berg, 1989.
* Goetsch, James Robert. Vico's Axioms: The Geometry of the Human
World. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995.
* Verene, Donald Phillip. The New Art of Autobiography: An Essay
on the Life of Giambattista Vico. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991.
* Verene, Donald Phillip. Vico's Science of the Imagination.
Cornell: Cornell University Press, 1981.
Bibliographies on Vico
Benedetto Croce published a bibliography of works on Vico in 1904.
This was updated by Fausto Nicolini in 1948. This bibliography was
further updated: Donzelli, Maria. Contributo alla bibliografia
vichiana (1948-1970). Naples: Guida Editori, 1973. And updated again:
Battistini, Andrea. Nuovo contributo alla bibliografia vichiana
(1971-1980). Studi vichiani 14. Naples: Guida 1983. Updates to this
bibliography have been published as supplements to the Bolletino del
Centro di Studi Vichiani.
For works in English, this volume compiles works on Vico as well as
works citing Vico: Verene, Molly Black. Vico: A Bibliography of Works
in English from 1884 to 1994. Bowling Green, OH: Philosophy
Documentation Center, 1994. Supplements to this bibliography which
update it from 1994 to the present have been appearing in New Vico
Studies.
No comments:
Post a Comment