History of philosophy

VICO, GIAMBATTISTA

Vico, Giambattista: translation

Giambattista VicoAntonio Pérez-RamosFaire, c’est se faire.S.MallarméGiambattista Vico’s (1688–1744) contribution to the history of western thought is bothdifficult to identify and still harder to evaluate. So much so that the overallcharacterization of his philosophy should perhaps be made chiefly by way of negatives:Vico is no empiricist, no experimentalist, no scholastic, no idealist, no positivist, norationalist and so on. In fact, any philosophical classification would be a misnomer forthe purported creator of a New Science, the self-appointed critic of Cartesianism, thepassionate vindicator of a ‘topical’ versus a ‘critical’ pedagogy, the putative discoverer ofa novel criterion of truth etc. This historiographic problem—i.e. the difficulty ofclassifying such a many-sided figure into a well-established canon—becomes furthercompounded by at least three complementary considerations: Vico’s purported isolationas an eighteenth-century thinker, the not yet corrected imbalance between his reputationin Italy (where he tends to be considered the country’s greatest philosopher) and hisreputation abroad; and, more generally, the fact of his being perceived as a precursor,which conjures up the whole panoply of unresolved tensions related to that status. Vicohimself made much of the first of these factors in hisAutobiographyof 1725–8 and in hisprivate letters, where he grossly exaggerated his loneliness as a thinker in his nativeNaples; and since that time many critics and scholars have repeated the implied corollaryof that book, i.e. the picture of a gigantic figure without direct forerunners or disciples.Thus, nationalistic motivations and the fervour of Neapolitan exiles in the earlynineteenth-century began to cement a cult which elevated Vico to the pedestal of acultural hero in the age of the Risorgimento—a situation which with all duemodifications still prevails today.1 And, finally, the status of a precursor is particularlydifficult to assess in this instance, for it sends us back to a much discussed question in thehistory of ideas and of philosophy proper.Such a question could be formulated in thismanner: are influences the result of direct acquaintance whenever we are talking ofintellectual affinities, or is there a collective wealth of patterns of thought which thehuman mind is compelled to resort to whenever confronted with the same or similar typeof issue? Vico, for example, has been lyrically hailed as, among other titles of glory,containing the nineteenth century in embryo,2 of fathering or at least prefiguring thewhole of German idealism,3 and of being the fountain-head of modern anthropology andpsycho-analysis.4 Though most of these claims appear today vastly exaggerated if takenat face value, there is a sense in which the radically atypical traits in Vico’s thought arelinked to further developments in western speculation, with or without directacquaintance from author to author. It is for this reason that any historiography worth itssalt should try to asses such purported affinities, or, at least, to outline the tantalizingcontours of similarities and incompatibilities.Vico’s starting-point as a philosopher is his criticism of Cartesianism, both as aphilosophy and as a philosophically-inspired pedagogy. From the early inaugural orationsthat Vico had to deliver in his capacity as Professor of Rhetoric at the University ofNaples, he emphasized time and again the putative sterilizing result of applying theanalytical method of thinking (as epitomized by the Cartesians Arnauld and Nicole intheirPort Royal Logic) against the oldars topicsthat is, the ancient canon of specificquestions and answers that the prospective learner had to ask about any subjectwhatsoever in order to attain a plausible (though not necessarily true) opinion in thematter in question.5 This debate (‘topical’ versus ‘critical’ philosophy) has led somestudents to see Vico as a fundamentally old-fashioned figure, propounding a supersededmethod of thinking in the tradition of rhetoric instead of embracing the novelty ofcontemporary doctrines in natural philosophy. As it stands, this criticism is unfair, for areading of Vico’s inaugural lessons prefigures his great discovery, i.e. theverum factumformula inDe Antiquissima Italorum Sapientiaof 1710, as a key to an understanding ofcontemporary physical science. So we can read in the orationDe Nostri TemporisStudiorum Rationeof 1708:Modern physicists resemble those who have inherited mansions where noluxury is lacking, so that they only need to move around the many pieces offurniture or embellish the house with some ornaments in accordance with thetastes of their time; and these learned men hold that the physical doctrines areNature herself… That is why every thing that on the strength of the geometricalmethod is shown in physics as being true is only probable /ista physicae quae vigeometricae methodi ostenduntur verae, nonnisi verisimilia sunt/ and fromgeometry has got the method, but not the demonstration. We demonstrategeometrical entities because we make them; if we could demonstrate physicaltruths, then we would be their authors/ geometrica demonstramus qua fecimus;si physica demonstrare possemus, faceremus/.6Now there are three main components in these compressed lines of the young Vico, linesbelonging to a chapter tellingly entitled ‘Of the Disadvantages of Introducing theGeometrical Method into Physics’. The first factor we should consider pertains to what inour idiolect is termed ‘the philosophy of science’. Vico’s radical and at the same timeoriginal position amounts to this: he is expressly rejecting the realist understanding of the‘mechanization of the word-picture’ (roughly: of Newtonian mechanics) as the true andobjective portrait of the physical world. Further yet, this rejection is made extensive toany physical system whatsoever. Instead, Vico proposes to consider the so-calledmechanical philosophy as a useful or expedient fiction, whose certainty is solely based onthe method deployed (i.e. mathematics), but falls short of the supposed objectification ofreality which a widespread realist self-understanding of modern science would claim foritself.7 Naturally, this approach may strike a conventionalist or fictionalist chord, andresembles Locke’s paradoxical dictum in theEssayiv. 12.10: ‘Natural philosophy is notcapable of being made a science’. But Vico’s philosophical acumen in reaching thatconclusion is all the more remarkable coming as it does from the rhetorical tradition andbeing, by and large, alien to the great philosophical debate that the new science hadunleashed. The second point to stress in the above passage concerns Vico’s view of puremathematics as precisely the onlytruescience conferred on man, because in it author andknower coincide: the mathematician, Vico holds, knows his truths by making, doing orbringing forth the elements with which or upon which he works. This is the first embryoof Vico’s celebratedverum ipsum factumprinciple as a criterion for gauging humanknowledge, and the cornerstone of his own constructivist theory, to which I shall shortlyreturn. And, finally, the above passage characterizes Vico’s own response to thecrisepyrrhonienneor sceptical challenge, the reaction to which, according to Pierre Bayle,serves to document the rise of modern philosophy and science.8 Vico’s answer to thatchallenge, moreover, establishes a certain hierarchy in the forms of human knowledgewhich he is going to develop and modify in his mature work. Let us consider Vico’sresponse to scepticism with some more detail.Mathematical knowledge, we said, is provenly certain(verum)because it is produced,realized, constructed or made(factum)by the knowing subject himself: ‘We demonstrategeometrical entities because we make them’. Now if mathematics thus typifies humancognition at his best, would it not be the case that it does so because it is preciselyembodying the only criterion of truth that man can follow? Here begins Vico’s systematiccritique of the other great foundationalist movement of the age, namely, Cartesianism, acritique to which he partially devoted the so-calledliber metaphysicusof 1710, i.e. theDe Antiqmssima Italorum Sapientia.9 In this book Vico’s quasi-fictionalist orconventionalist understanding of physical science is expressly coupled with a full-fledgedconstructivist theory of truth whose further implications for the classification of thesciences are clearly delineated. In so doing, however, Vico considerably draws on theAristotelian doctrine that to know means to knowper causasas a way of exposing theputative fallacy and incoherence of the Cartesian cogito. Thus, he programmaticallyasserts that ‘science is the knowledge of the genus or the mode by which a thing ismade /scientia sit cognitio generis seu modi, quo res fiat/…by means of which the mind,at the same time that it knows the mode because it arranges the elements, makes thething /dum mens cogitat, rem faciat/’; and consequently: ‘Human truths are those ofwhich we ourselves arrange the elements’.10 So the first adumbration of Vico’s greatepistemic canon inDe Nostri Temporis Studiorum Rationereaches maturity and becomesfully developed in his criticism of Cartesian metaphysics: the true and the made areconvertible, and the ego which the cogito is supposed to discover or establish as thefirmest truth is not that piece of rock-bottom knowledge from which other verities can beinferred in a deductive chain. According to Vico, the notionally unchallengeable ego hasno causal underpinnings whatsoever, that is to say, it is not constructed or fabricated,made by the thinking mind. In fine, the Cartesian cogito ‘I think, therefore I am’ istherefore a form ofcoscienza(or very vivid mental content, as a Humean ‘impression’),but it can never attain to the status ofscienzaor proven knowledge as constructed by theinquiring subject. Again, the anti-sceptical tenor (even as Descartes emphasized in thecase of his own cogitation) of Vico’s purported discovery is expressly stressed:To be sure, there is no other way in which scepticism can indeed be refuted,except that the criterion of the true should be to have made the thing itself….Those truths are human truths, the elements of which we shape /fingamus/ forourselves, which we contain within ourselves, and which we project adinfinitum (to infinity) through postulates; and, when we combine them, we makethe truths that, by thus combining them, we come to know. And because of allthis we get hold of the genus and form by which we make these things.11At this point Vico also invokes a theological sanction for this criterion, given that ‘DivineKnowledge is the norm of human knowledge’ (ibid.). The starting-point of his reflectionhere, however, seems to be an awkward philological doctrine, namely, the putativesynonymity of the wordsverumandfactumin classical Latin. Indeed, Vico’s openinggambit in chapter I of theDe Antiquissimaruns:For the Latinsverum/the true/ andfactum/what is made/ are interchangeable, orto use the customary language of the Schools, they are convertible /Latinisverum et factum reciprocantur, seu, ut Scholarum vulgus loquitur, convertuntur/… Hence it is reasonable to believe that the ancient sages of Italy entertained thefollowing belief about the true: ‘The true is precisely what is made’ /verumipsum factum/.12Vico’s resort to the Latin language in order to bolster up his gnoseological position wassoon criticized on linguistic grounds in the review of his book which appeared in thelearned publicationGiornale de’ Letterati d’Italia. In hisFirst Responseto thosecriticisms, Vico tried to defend his philological thesis by quoting Plautus and Terence, butin hisSecond Response(following a rejoinder in the journal) he wisely retreated from theterrain of pure lexicography and explained thatetymologies which the grammarians draw largely from the Greek language ofthe inhabitants of the Ionian coast serve me only as evidence that the ancientEtruscan language was diffused among all the peoples of Italy, as well as inMagna Graecia.They have no other use for me.I have tried to figure out thereasons that the concepts of these wise men became obscure and were lost tosight as their learned speech /i loro dotti parlari/ became current and wasemployed by the vulgar.13So theverum factumcriterion, stripped of its philological clothing, is now presented aspossessing the character of an absolute and self-evident truth—the touchstone ofanyconceivable human truth. To make this position even clearer, Vico condenses much of hisconstructivist ideal under a theological cloak which recaptures most of the topics we havebeen considering, that is, the nature of mathematics, the criticism of Descartes’s claimabout the self-certainty of clear and distinct ideas, theverum factumtopos as exemplifiednot only in mathematics qua constructs but in any facet of human cognition, and finallyhis own hierarchy of knowledge. For this reason, Vico’sSecond Responseto the learnedjournal deserves extensive quotation:The criterion for possessing the science of something is to put it into effect /è ilmandarla ad effetto/ and proving from causes is making what one proves. Andthis being is absolutely true because it is convertible with the made and itscognition is identical with its operation. This criterion is guaranteed for me byGod’s science, which is the source and standard of all truths. This criterionguarantees me that the only human sciences are the mathematical ones, and thatthey only prove from causes /e ch’esse unicamente pruovano dalle cause/.Beyond that, it gives me the way of classifying the non-scientificdisciplines /notizie/ that are either certain on the basis of indubitable signs, orprobable on the basis of good argument, or truelike on the basis of powerfulhypotheses. Do you wish to teach me a scientific truth? Grant me the causewhich is completely contained within me so that I invent a name at my will, andI establish an axiom regarding the relation that I set up between two or moreideas of things which are abstract and which are, consequently, both containedin me…. You could tell me, ‘Make a demonstration of the assumed theorem’,which is tantamount to ‘Make true what you want to know’. And in knowing thetruth that you have proposed, I shall make it; so that there will not remain for meany ground to doubt it because I myself have made it. The criterion of the ‘clearand distinct perception’ does not assure me of scientific knowledge. As used inphysics or ethics, it does not yield a truth that has the same force as the one itgives me in mathematics. The criterion of making what is known gives methe /logical/ difference here: for in mathematics I know truth by making it; inphysics and the other sciences the situation is different.14This long quotation may help us to approach twoquestiones vexataethat have exercisedthe mind of a host of philosophers and Vichian scholars. These are: (a) in how far isVico’s thought original, i.e. is his constructivist criterion really new, as he never tires torepeat?; (b) is it philosophically sound to uphold that criterion and what are its historicalcredentials?The first question has been dealt with with some acerbity, given Vico’s reputation inItaly. Thus the great philosopher and Vichian scholar Benedetto Croce maintained thatVico’s originality was beyond dispute, althoughformalprecedents of his criterion couldbe found.15 More recent research, however, makes it impossible to share Croce’s viewand tends to regard Vico’sGrundsatzas one of the various formulations, perhaps the mostfelicitious one, of a whole family of ideas: the maker’s knowledge tradition, or in AmosFunkenstein’s phrase, the ‘ergetic ideal’.16 Its barest outline would be roughly as follows.A tradition which goes back to Antiquity postulates that objects of knowledge are in anessential sense objects of construction, that knowing is a form of making, and that thehuman knower is such as maker or doer. This gnoseological principle has been advancednot so much as a method but as a mode of thinking or as an archetype of thought, and itspolemical rejection is to be found in many significant places of ancient philosophicalwriting. Both Plato and Aristotle, for example, considered that ideal worth criticizing andconsistently saw the human knower as a privileged beholder or enlightened user, never asa maker.17 But there are some traces of this tradition that classical speculation was unableto erase. Thus in the theological reflections of Philo of Alexandria and in themathematical thought of Proclus we encounter the notion that knowing implies making oris a kind of making and vice versa.18 God’s knowledge of the world, for example, is preeminentlyknowledge by doing, i.e. knowledgequaCreator, and, as Christian theologygradually asserted itself, the difference between divine and human knowledge began tobe perceived more and more as quantitative rather than as qualitative: God possessesinfinite knowledge, but man’s knowledge of some privileged truths contained in God’smind (i.e. mathematics) approaches that of the Deity. We know about the circle almost inthe same way as God does, though we know much less; yet allegedly in the discovery ofthe pertinent mathematical truths we proceed discursively or step by step, whilst God’smind encompasses all cognitive operations in a single all-embracing intuition. In thesame vein, Proclus argued that the mathematician projects his figures out of his ownmind into a kind of imaginative space, where he proceeds to arrange his elements. He istherefore knowerquamaker of mathematical. Now, these ideas gained much favour inthe fifteenth century with Nicholas of Cusa (1401–64), who systematically dwelt onmathematics as a form of human and divine creation.19 Later on, the new scientificmovement made its own use of these notions under the guise of a legitimizing ormetatheoretical topos—an undercurrent in philosophical thought which has rarely beenspotted. Men like Cardan, Vives, Sanchez, Bacon, Galileo, Descartes, Mersenne,Gassendi, Pascal, Kepler, Locke, Boyle and many minor figures embraced the new, yetelusive but immensely powerful ideal that knowledge is achieved through doing orconstruction and gave to it different emphases and interpretations.20 Thus, theunderstanding of this principle and the stress laid on its implication by each individualthinker was sometimes vastly different and even opposite (for instance, as regards thequestion whether this kind of knowledge by making referred exclusively to mathematicsor also to the material fabrication or construction of a model of man and the universe),although the tenor of the ideal is perceptible in the most unlikely sources, sometimes witha sceptical slant. To confine ourselves to English figures, Joseph Glanville (1630–80)wrote that ‘the Universe must be known by the same art whereby it was made’, obviouslymeaning thereby that to know physical things amounts to being able to reconstruct themat a minute scale as far as it is humanly feasible.21 Thomas Browne (1605–82) inReligioMedici(1642, writtenc.1630) expressly calls God Artifex ‘wise because he knows allthings, and he knows all things because he made them all’.22 With yet another aim inview, Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) wrote thatOf arts, some are demonstrable, others undemonstrable; and the demonstrableare those the construction of the subject whereof is in the power of the artistitself, who, in his demonstration, does no more but deduce the consequences ofhis own operation. The reason whereof is this, that the science of every subjectis derived from a precognition of the causes, generation and construction of thesame; and, consequently, where the causes are known, there is a place fordemonstration, but not where the causes are to seek for. Geometry therefore isdemonstrable, for the lines and figures from which we reason are drawn anddescribed by ourselves. But because of natural bodies we know not thedemonstration, but seek it from the effect, there lies no demonstration of whatthe causes be we seek for, but only of what may be.23This is fairly similar to some of Vico’s pronouncements above, especially if we compareit to Vico’s hierarchy of knowledge as presented inDe Antiqmssima:Mechanics is less certain than geometry and arithmetics, because it deals withmotion, but with the aid of machines; physics is less certain than mechanics,because mechanics, treats the external motion of circumferences, whereasphysics treats the internal motions of centres; morality /moralis/ is less certainthan physics because the latter deals with those internal motions of bodieswhich are by Nature certain, whereas morality examines the motions ofminds /motus animorum/ which are most deeply hidden /penitissimi/ and arisemostly from desire, which is infinite /et ut plurimum a libidine, quae est infinita,proveniunt/.24Now it is highly unlikely that, with the possible exception of Proclus’Commentary on theFirst Book of Euclid’s Elementstranslated into Latin by Francesco Barozzi (Padua,1560), Vico had really come across an articulated intimation of theverum factumtopos.This may be an excellent instance, therefore, of the kind of progress philosophysometimes has in store, namely, the growth in tension and self-awareness in certainopaque areas, or the making finally explicit of a pattern of thought which philosophershad been utilizing on various occasions without properly identifying the commondenominator of much of their thinking. Hence, one of Vico’s claims to greatness liessurely here: he abruptly opensDe Antiquissima Italorum Sapientiawith the formulationof the epistemo-logical canon so many thinkers in his age were unwittingly using.According to D.P.Lachterman, that canon stands for nothing else but ‘the Mark of theModern’, that is, the idea that the human mind should be compared to a pair of handsinstead of to a faithful mirror—a notion which will eventually make a construct of‘reality’ itself.25 Of course, it would be utterly preposterous to claim that theconvertibility of the true and the made can be unqualifyingly predicated of all of man’scognitive facets. But, since we do not know whether such an all-embracing formula existsor can exist, we may well greet the Vichian topos as a historically exact identification ofone of the leading ideals of man’s self-reflecting rationality. So much for thephilosophical soundness of his principle.Let us glance back at Vico’s last quotation above. The ‘moral science’ had beendemoted to the lowest rank in his epistemological hierarchy because the ‘motions ofminds’ were supposedly inscrutable. Now it is surprising that what has been called sinceCroce’s studies ‘the second form of Vichian gnoseology’ should take its starting-pointprecisely from the reversal of that position, that is, from the contention that it is manquaconstructor or creator of human institutions (‘the motions of minds’) that should enjoypride of place in the architecture of Vico’s magnum opus, i.e. theScienza Nuova.26Though nowhere termed ‘principle’ or ‘corollary’(degnità)in the language that Vicoadopts in that work, theverum factumtopos is expressly expounded in three paragraphs(334, 349, and 374) as though it were a reminder of the epistemological pillar on whichthe new science is erected. Further yet, any attempt to salvage the cognitive credentials ofnatural science in the domain of the maker’s knowledge tradition (as inDe AntiquissimaItalorum Sapientia) disappears altogether, and to the later Vico the foundation of thisknowledge of human affairs orcose umaneentails a radical scepticism about thepossibility of man’s ever achieving a science of Nature. In Vico’s own words:In the night of thick darkness enveloping the earliest antiquity, so remote fromourselves, there shines the eternal and never failing light of a truth beyond allquestion/questo lume eterno, che non tramonta, di questa verità/:that the worldof civil society has been made by men, and that its principles are therefore to befound/ritruovare/within the modifications of our own human mind. Whoeverreflects on this cannot but marvel that the philosophers should have bent alltheir energies to the study of Nature, which, since God made it, he alone knows;and that they should have neglected the study of the world of the nations, orcivil world, which, since men have made it, men could come to know.27Now it is important to realize that the Italianritruovarein this paragraph may mean tofindagain,since many misunderstandings have arisen from it being translated as simply‘to find’. This sentence somehow implies that the human mind is posited by Vico ascontaining in its present and civilized stage all the patterns of thought that it has deployedor projected into the surrounding world, first in the process of humanization and then inthe setting-up of the multifarious panoply of human institutions, social structures andpolitical systems. So Vico is not simply asserting that it is men that make their history,but upholding a rather strong thesis as to the rationale of man’s capacity to grasp thatvery history, even when he is not its direct author. Yet, critically considered, here lies oneof Vico’s most serious weaknesses, for he offers no proof as to the possibility of thatritruovarein the required gnoseological sense. In fact, the difficulty can be furtherpressed, for the ‘motions of the mind’ are most of the time an act of epistemic selfdeception,as Lachterman argues and Vico seems to recognize in several places.28 Howcan a rational mind—say, the historian’s—run the gamut of all the irrational or nonrationalmoves that in Vico’s own narrative of the origins of mankind have played sodecisive a part? Besides, what counts as ‘rational’ in the mind of a Vichian historian? Forexample, the invention of what he considers the three master institutions of humanizedlife (religion, marriage and burial) did not arise from any kind of rational computationthat we could understand and exactly reproduce in our own minds with absolute certainty.Simply to attribute them to our feelings of fear and of shame, as Vico does, appears arather jejune thesis, given the vast plurality of forms that such feelings may take and mayhave in fact taken in man’s psychological make-up:
an in his ignorance makes himself the ruler of the Universe, for in the
examples cited /[i.e. those related to the origin of language and metaphor]/ hehas made of himself an entire world. So that, as rational metaphysics teachesthat man becomes all things by understanding them /homo intelligendo fitomnia/ this imaginative metaphysics shows /dimostra/ that man becomes allthings bynotunderstanding them /homo non intelligendo fit omnia/ and perhapsthe latter proposition is truer than the former, for when man understands, heextends /spiega/ his mind and takes in /comprende/ the things, but when he doesnot understand, he makes the things out of himself and becomes them bytransforming himself into them.[(Sc. N.par. 405)]If this is really so and the possibilities of error become less and less frequent as weadvance towards those stages of humanity which are supposed to resemble ours, then agood case could be made for arguing that Vico had in fact adumbrated the concept ofVerstehen,that is to say, of cognitive empathy or imaginative understanding which mancan use solely when handling the things that belong to man: motivations, fears, feelingsand so forth. This is a mode of knowing (sometimes understood as a method of sorts)proper to the human sciences orGeisteswissenschaften,a mode or perhaps a method thatby definition natural sciences lack.29 This interpretation is suggested by, amongst others,Isaiah Berlin in his essays on Vico and theScienza Nuova. According to Berlin, Vicodiscovered a hitherto ‘unrecognized sense of knowing basic to all humane studies’. In hisown words, this sense of knowing is no other but the sensein which I know what it is to be poor, to fight for a cause, to belong to a nation,to join or abandon a church or a party, to feel nostalgia, terror, the presence of aGod, to understand a gesture, a work of art, a joke, a man’s character or that oneis transformed or lying to oneself.One has to note, however, that in the above examples no time or place provision is made,so that it would appear that the experience of being poor—to quote one of hisillustrations—is fundamentally the same in twentieth-century Britain and in tenth-centuryChina: But it is highly unlikely that the notion of ‘poverty’ has remained unalteredthroughout history and geography. Be that as it may, such things are known, Berlincontinues,in the first place…by personal experience, in the second place because theexperience of others is sufficiently woven into our own to be seized quasidirectly…and in the third place by the working (sometimes by a consciouseffort) of the imagination. This is the sort of knowing that participants of anactivity claim to possess as against mere observers; the knowledge of the actorsas against that of the audience, of the ‘inside’ story as against that obtained fromsome ‘outside’ vantage point: knowledge by ‘direct acquaintance’ with my innerstates or by sympathetic insight into those of others.30Berlin’s suggestion and description is indeed valid for much of Dilthey’s, Weber’s orCollingwood’s theorization of the method and aim proper to the human sciences or tohistory. In the initial mist to which Vico’s efforts belong, however, that characterizationturns out to be far too clear, though undoubtedly Berlin is looking in the right direction.There is something else, in fact, that would make possible the operations ofVersteheninVico’sScienza Nuova. Let us see how it might work.The other key idea which Vico resorts to when attempting to guarantee the exactness ofour re-entering into other men’s minds or when trying to engage cognitively with themost remote past is the notion of Providence. This, as shall be shown,semi-secularideawould guide the course of nations according to specifical, intellectually graspablepatterns (Vico’scorsiandricorsi), constituting the so-calledstoria ideale eternaof thatwhich ‘was, is, and shall be’. Needless to add, in Vico’s speculation the ‘motions of thehuman mind’ are to follow suit, over and above the personal will of the historical actorsthemselves. Now, this notion, no less than theverum factumtopos, enjoys a reputablepedigree from the prophet Isaiah 10:5–8, to Maimonides’s ‘cunning of God’,Mandeville’s ‘private vices, public benefits’, Kant’s ‘hidden plan ofNature’(verborgener Plan der Natur)and, of course, Hegel’s ‘cunning of Reason’(Listder Vernunft)—the last ones being wholly secular ways of translating an oldtheologoumenon. Amos Funkenstein has identified and richly documented this family ofideas. He has dubbed it ‘the invisible hand explanations’ in history, alluding to AdamSmith’s celebrated simile in economics.31 Now, Vico is quite amenable to thisdescription in his explanation of history and of the manner man is capable of grasping itin theScienza Nuova. Thus, while describing at length the slow process by which manhas forged his own civil nature out of an initial brutish existence, Vico rejects all forms ofdiffusionism in the spreading of civilization and insists on a spontaneous process takingplace in each nation and place. Yet, he emphasizes again and again that mankind iswilling one thing and invariably achieving another, and that the oblique route that thenations follow (theircorsoandricorso) is, as it were, guaranteed in its intelligibleuniformity by a non-conscious effort of the historical subjects:For, though men have themselves made this world of nations… it has withoutdoubt been born of a mind often unlike /diversa/, at times quite contrary to /tuttacontraria/ and always superior to, the particular ends these men had setthemselves…. Thus men would indulge their bestial lust and forsake theirchildren, but they create the purity of marriage, whence arise the families; thefathers would exercise their paternal powers over the clients withoutmoderation, but they subject them to civil power, whence arise the cities; thereigning orders of nobles would abuse their seigneural freedom over theplebeians, but they fall under the servitude of laws which create popular liberty;the free people would break loose from the restraint of their laws, but they fallsubject to monarchs…. By their always acting thus, the same things come tobe.32Yet, this Providence is hardly a religious, not to say a Catholic, concept, for it is in-builtin the very process of humanization (the birth of nations) and does not leave any room forany form of transcendence. Mankind would behave in that way with or without thesupervision of an all-powerful Deity and, for this reason, Vico’s Providence is, so tospeak, a Providence without a God.In the end, the five books and the 1,112 paragraphs of the final version of theScienzaNuovaof 1744 may seem to prove unequal to the gigantic task Vico had glimpsedhimself accomplishing. For one thing, it was necessary to command far more philologicaland anthropological scholarship, and especially to be in possession of a more worked-outmethodological thought as regards its organization and presentation.33 Nevertheless,truncated as it now appears, Vico’s accomplishment in theScienza Nuovais admirable interms of its originality in the role that he (perhaps unwittingly) attributed to the nonrationalin man’s protracted search for his own social being: the inquiry into ‘truth’ in itshistorical dimension, into the creation of the city and of civilized existence, and into thecapacity we possess—or we lack—of grasping other men’s expectations and fears. In aword, Vico was trying to formulate the credentials we can legitimately attribute tohistorical knowledge of any sort. If neither theverum factumcanon nor the labyrinthineexpositions of theScienza Nuovaappear to us wholly satisfactory, we should perhapsremember that the theory of truth, like the Greek Argos of old, has a hundred eyes. Themerit of having spotted several of them, and not the feeblest ones, is the indisputablebasis of Vico’s intellectual achievement.NOTES1 Cf. Jules Chaix-Ruy, ‘La fortune de G.B.Vico’, in [13.16], 124–52. The myth of Vico’sisolation in Naples has been exposed, among others, by Nicola Badaloni in his two books,[13.26] and [13.27] and in his article ‘Vico nell’ ambito della filosofia europea’, [13.12],233–66. Badaloni stresses Vico’s links with the Accademia degli Investiganti and other localcircles of the Neapolitan Enlightenment. Cf. also G.Bedani, Vico Revisited. Orthodoxy,Naturalism and Science in the Scienza Nuova, Oxford, 1989, pp. 7–32, and A.Battistini,‘Momenti e tendenze degli studi vichiani dal 1978 al 1985’, Giambattista Vico. Poesia,Logica, Religione, ed. G.Santinelli, Brescia, Morcelliana, 1986, pp. 27–102.2 [13.47], ‘Conclusione’, 219–26: ‘egli fu né più né meno che il secolo decimonono ingerme’ (p.226).3 B.Spaventa, La filosofia italiana nelle sue relazioni con la filosofia europea, Bari, Berg,1908, pp. 31,60.4 Cf. E.Leach, ‘Vico and the Future of Anthropology’, [13.20], 149–59; J.H. White,‘Developmental Psychology and Vico’s Concept of Universal History’, [13.20], 1–3; SilvanoArietti, ‘Vico and Modern Psychiatry’, [13.20], 81–94 (on Vico and Freud).5 Cf. [13.77], esp. 24–89, and 105–15; Gustavo Costa, ‘Vico and Ancient Rhetoric’, ClassicalInfluences on Western Thought, ed. R.R.Bolgar, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press,1979, pp. 247–62; E.Grassi, ‘Critical Philosophy or Topical Philosophy? Meditations on theDe Nostri Temporis Studiorum Ratione’, [13.18], 39–50 (Italian version in [13.3], 108–21).6 [13.3], 68–9 (my trans.). Cf. [13.22], 31–45. This is the first recorded formulation of theverum factum principle.7 On the young Vico’s scientific background, cf. P.Rossi’s historical account, ‘Ancora suicontemporanei di Vico’, Rivista di filosofia 76(1985): 465–74; M. Torrini, ‘Il problema delrapporto tra scienza e filosofia nel pensiero del primo Vico’, Physis 20(1978): 103–21.J.Barnouw has reviewed the different trends of research in [13.29], 609–20. Barnouw’s thesisdoes not refer specifically to the De Antiquissima Italorum Sapientia, but the authormaintains that ‘Vico’s development…supports the view that the new sciences of the 17thcentury, from Galileo on, provided the crucial inspiration and model for the formation of thehuman sciences’ (p.609). This is more or less the route Comte took, but it hardly squares withthe methods of Vico in the Scienza Nuova, despite his own claim that he is applying Bacon’smethod (par. 163; cf. also 137, 359). Cf. n. 33 below.8 Cf. Richard Popkin, A History of Scepticism from Erasmus to Spinoza, rev. edn. London,University of California Press, 1979, Preface, p. xvii.9 De Antiqmssima Italorum Sapientia was also called liber prias metaphysicus; in Vico’soriginal project, a liber secundus physicus and a liber tertius moralis were to follow. Somenotes prepared for the second book were published fifty years after Vico’s death, assembledas a monograph entitled De Aequilibrio Corporis Animantis, a book now lost. Vico appearsto have begun working on the Scienza Nuova fairly soon after the publication of the DeAntiqmssima. Cf. [13.8], Introduction.10 Vico stresses that the cogito is a sign, but not a cause of my being. Vico uses here the Greekterm tekmērion, a word of Stoic echoes. This is Vico’s sceptic reply to Descartes:The dogmatist…would allow that the sceptic acquires knowledge of his being fromawareness of his thinking, since the unshakable certainty of existence is born fromhis awareness of thinking. And, of course, no one can be wholly certain that heexists unless he makes up his own being out of something he cannot doubt.Consequently, the sceptic cannot be certain that he is because he does not gather hisexistence from a wholly undoubted principle. To all this the sceptic will respond bydenying that knowledge of being is acquired from consciousness of thinking. For,he argues, to know (scire) is to be cognizant (nosse) of the causes out of which athing is born. But I who think am mind and body, and if thought were the cause ofmy being, thought would be the cause of the body. Yet there are bodies that do notthink. Rather, it is because I consist of body and mind that I think; so that body andmind united are the cause of thought. For if I were only body I would not think. If Iwere only mind, I would have /pure/ intelligence. In fact, thinking is the sign andnot the cause of my being mind. But the sure sign (techmerium) is not the cause, forthe clever sceptic will not deny that certainity of sure /rational/ signs, but just thecertainty of causes.([13–8], 55–6; [13–6], 72–5)11 [13.8], 57; De Antiquissima, I, iv [13.6], 741. This subchapter is entitled ‘God is thecomprehension of all causes—Divine Knowledge is the norm of human knowledge’.12 [13.3], 63–4; [13.8], 4 5f. (italics added). Cf. also the following: ‘Amongst human sciencesonly those are true which…have elements which we coordinate and are contained withinourselves…and when we put together such elements, we are becoming authors of suchtruths /et cum ea componimus, vera quae… cognoscimus, faciamus/ [13.3], 62f, 68f, 73f.13 [13.3], 149; [13.8], 157. In [13.3], 155 Vico recognizes that the value of every thing he isproposing does not stem from ‘the force and evidence of the reasons advanced’, for in lexicalquestions usage and authority overshadow the innermost meanings of speech.14 [13.8], 167; [13.3], 156.15 [13.48], 233–59. Cf. also G.Gentile, Studi vichiani: Lo svolgimento della filosofia vichiana(1912–15), Opère Complete, vol. xvi, Florence, Sansoni, 19633.16 Amos Funkenstein, Theology and the Scientific Imagination from the Middle Ages to theSeventeenth Century, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1986, 290–345; esp. 296–9;R.Mondolfo, Il verum factum prima di Vico, Bari, Guida, 1969, and the criticisms levelledagainst this book by Maria Donzelli, ‘Studi vichiani e storia delle idee. (A proposito di unsaggio di Rodolfo Mondolfo)’, Filosofia 21(1970): 33–48; and A.Pérez-Ramos, FrancisBacon’s Idea of Science and the Maker’s Knowledge Tradition, Oxford, Clarendon, 1988, pp.48–62, 167–96.17 In Aristotle’s Politica 1282a17ff. we read:About some things the man who made them would not be the only nor the bestjudge, as in the case of professionals whose products come within the knowledge oflay men also (hoi mē echontes tēn technfin): to judge a house, for instance, does notbelong only to the man who built it, but in fact the man who uses the house (thehouseholder) will be an even better judge of it, and a steerman judges a rudderbetter than a carpenter, and the diner judges a banquet better than the cook.[(Loeb edn, trans. H.Rachman, 227)]Plato resorted to the same sort of confutation in several places (Euthydemus 289A-D,Cratylns 390 B, Meno 88 E), and especially in Republic 601 E-602 A:The user of anything is the one who knows most of it by experience, and he reportsto the maker the good and bad effects in the use of the thing he uses. As, forexample, the flute-player reports to the flute-maker which flutes respond and serverightly in flute-playing, and will order the kind that must be made and the other willobey him…. The one, then, possessing knowledge (epistēmēn) reports about thegoodness or badness of the flutes, and the other, believing, will make them…. Then,in respect to the same implement, the maker will have right belief (pistin orthēn)about its excellent and defects from association with the man who knows,…but theuser will have true knowledge.[(Loeb edn, trans. P.Shorey, 445–7)]It is tempting to perceive in these statements a dim reflection of social conditions amongst theGreeks.18 Cf. Philo of Alexandria (floruit c. AD 40), Quod Deus Immutabilis sit, in Complete Works I,22–3, (Loeb edn, trans. F.H.Colson and G.H.Whittaker, repr. 1960); cf. also De OpificioMundi I, 20–1. For a treatment of this topic by mediaeval Jewish and Christian philosophers,in the context of God’s self-knowledge qua Creator, cf. A.Funkenstein, Theology and theScientific Imagination, p. 291f. For mathematics, cf. Proclus’ Commentary on the First Bookof Euclid’s Elements, ed. and trans. P.R.Morrow, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press,1970, Prologue 11–12 and 64. The soul is equipped with mathematical patterns(paradeigmata) which it brings forth as projections (probolai) of its own making. Proclus’Platonism is fairly similar to Vico’s in that both purport to find the seeds of truth hidden inman’s creative mind.19 Cf. [13.24], 321ff., Hans Blumenberg, ‘“Nachahmung der Natur”: zur Vorgeschichte desschöpferischen Menschen’, Studium Generale 10 (1957): 266–83), and Cusanus undNolanus, Frankfurt-on-the-Main, Suhrkamp, 1973.20 Cf. Vinzenz Rüfner, ‘Homo secundus Deus. Eine gestesgeschichtliche Studie zummenschlichen Schöpfertum’, Philosophisches Jahrbuch 63(1955): 248–91; A. Funkenstein,Theology and the Scientific Imagination, pp. 290–345; Jürgen Klüver, Operationismus. Kritikund Geschichte einer Philosophie der exakten Wissenscbaften, Stuttgart, Frommann-Holzboog 1971, pp. 38–52; and A.Perez-Ramos, Francis Bacon’s Idea of Science, pp. 135–98.21 Joseph Glanvill, Plus Ultra, or the Progress and Advancement of Learning, London, 1668, p.35.22 Religio Medici I, 13 (1642/43, written in the mid-1630s), ed. with Introduction and notes byC.A.Patrides (Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1977, repr. 1984), p. 74.23 ‘Six Lessons to the Savillian Professors of Mathematics’, English Works, ed. W. Molesworth,London, 1838–45, VI, pp. 183–4; repr. Scientia Verlag, Aalen 1961–6. Cf. Arthur Child,Making and Knowing in Hobbes, Vico and Dewey, Los Angeles, University of CaliforniaPress, 1953, pp. 271–83, and W.Sacksteder, ‘Hobbes: the Art of the Geometricians’, Journalof the History of Ideas 18(1980): 131–46, and his ‘Hobbes: Geometrical Objects’, Philosophyof Science 48(1981): 573–90. Mathematics was not, however, the sole direction in whichHobbes developed his constructivist stance. As with the later Vico, there is a secondinterpretation of this topos, once it is realized that the State, no less than mathematicals, is aman-made product:To men is granted knowledge only of those things whose generation depends upontheir own judgement. Hence the theories concerning quantity, knowledge of whichis called geometry, are demonstrable. There is a geometry and it is demonstrablebecause we ourselves make the figures. In addition, politics and ethics, namely,knowledge of the just and the unjust, of the equitable and the unequitable, can bedemonstrated a priori: in fact its principles, the conception of the just and theequitable and their opposites, are known to us because we ourselves create thecauses of justice, that is, laws and conventions.De Homine II, 10, Opera Philosophica quae latine scripsit (same edn) II,pp. 92–4; cf. alsoDe CiveXVII andDe CorporeXXV24 [13.3], 68–9; [13.8], 52. Vico, however, tries to provide a rationale for successful explanationin physics:Those theories /ea meditata/ are approved in physics which have some similaritywith what we do /simile quid operemus/. For this reason, hypotheses about thenatural order are considered most illuminating and are accepted with the fullestconsent of everyone, if we can base experiments on them, in which we makesomething similar to Nature.(ibid.)25 Cf. D.P.Lachterman, The Ethics of Geometry. A Genealogy of Modernity, London,Routledge, 1989, pp. 1–24. For other expositions of the verum factum topos, cf.W.Vossenkuhl, Wahrheit des Handels. Untersuchungen zum Verhältnis von Wahrheit undHandeln, Bonn, Bouvier, 1974, pp. 1–43; Stephen Otto, ‘Vico als Transzendentalphilosoph’,Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 62(1980): 67–80, and ‘Interprétation transcendentalede Paxiome “verum et factum convertuntur” ’, Archives de Philosophie 40(1977): 13–39.Against this interpretation, cf. F.Fellmann, ‘1st Vicos “Neue Wissenschaft”Transzendentalphilosophie?’, Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 61(1979): 68–76. Manypoints of this debate are summarized in J.C.Morrison, ‘Three Interpretations of Vico’,Journal of the History of Ideas 39 (1978): 511–18.26 The Scienza Nuova is a rather ambitious work. It purports to contain: (a) a ‘civil and rationaltheory of Providence’, i.e. a demonstration of the way Providence supposedly acts in sociallife; (2) a ‘philosophy of authority’, or on the origins of property (auctores); (3) a ‘history ofhuman ideas’, especially the oldest ones in the religious field; (4) a ‘philosophical critique’ ofthe most remote religious traditions; (5) an ‘eternal ideal history’, showing the alwaysrepeatedroute the nations run; (6) a ‘system of natural law of the nations’, based on primitivenecessity and usefulness; and (7) a science of the oldest and darkest beginnings or principlesof ‘universal human history’, where Vico tries to interpret the hidden truth of mythologicalfables. All in all, Vico aims at what we might call an exploration of the ‘savage mind’ in theage of gods and heroes. In this sense the Scienza Nuova purports to advance a rational theoryof the mondo civile. Cf. K.Löwith, Meaning in History, Chicago, University of ChicagoPress, 1949, ch. vi.27 Par. 331. [13.3], 461; [13.5], 96. Vico, however, does not forget the theological sanction ofthe verum factum topos in par. 349:For the first indubitable principle posited above /par. 331/ is that this world ofnations has certainly been made by men, and its guise /la guisa/ must therefore befound within the modifications of our own human mind /le modificazioni dellanostra mente umana/. And history cannot be more certain than when he who createsthe things also narrates them. Now, as geometry, when it constructs the world ofquantity out of its elements, or contemplates that world, is creating it of itself, justso does our science/ create for itself/ the world of nations/, but with a reality greaterby just so much as the institutions having to do with human affairs /gli ordinid’intorno alle faccende degli uomini/ are more real than points, lines, surfaces andfigures are. And this very fact is an argument, O reader, that these proofs are of akind divine and should give thee a divine pleasure, since in God knowledge andcreation are one and the same thing.Cf. [13.3], 467; [13.5], 104f.28 ‘Vico and Marx: Notes on a Precursory Reading’, [13.21], 38–61, esp. 51.29 Cf. Karl-Otto Apel, Die Erklären-Verstehen Kontroverse in transzendeltalpragmatischerSicht, Frankfurt-on-the-Main, Suhrkamp, 1979; J.R.Martin, ‘Another Look at the Doctrine ofVerstehen’, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 20 (1969): 53–67; W.Bourgedis,‘Verstehen in the Social Sciences’, Zeitschrift für allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 7(1976):26–38.30 I.Berlin, ‘Vico’s Concept of Knowledge’, in [13.18], 375f. For a criticism of Berlin’s viewscf. [13.84], 159ff.31 A.Funkenstein, Theology and the Scientific Imagination, pp. 202–89, esp. pp. 279–89. Vico’ssecularized Providence and the autonomy he attributes to the course of human history bears astrong resemblance with some of Spinoza’s doctrines, despite Vico’s claims about man’s freewill. Cf. A.Pons, ‘L’ idee de développement chez Vico’, in Entre Forme et Histoire, ed.O.Bloch, B.Balan and P.Carrive, Paris, Meridiens Klincksieck, 1988, pp. 181–94; [13.77],49–68; J.Samuel Preus, ‘Spinoza, Vico and the Imagination of Religion’, Journal of theHistory of Ideas 49 (1988): 71–93.32 Sc. N. par. 1108; [13.5], pp. 700f. Cf. also par. 341:But men, because of their corrupted nature, are under the tyranny of self-love,which compels them to make private utility their chief guide. Seeking everythinguseful for themselves and nothing for their companions, they cannot bring theirpassion under control /porre in conato/ to direct them towards justice. We therebyestablish that man in the bestial state desires only his own welfare /la sua salvezza/;having taken wife and begotten children, he desires his own welfare along with thatof the nation; when the nations are united by wars, treaties of peace, alliances, andcommerce, he desires his own welfare along with that of his family; having enteredupon civil life, he desires his own welfare along with that of his city; when its ruleis extended over several peoples, he desires his own welfare along with that of theBIBLIOGRAPHYWorks in Italian and English13.1Opere di Giambattista Vico,ed. with textual and historical notes by Fausto Nicolini,in collaboration with Giovanni Gentile (vol. i) and Benedetto Croce (vol. v), 8 vols,Bari, Laterza, 1911–41.13.2Opere di Giambattista Vico,ed. with an Introduction and notes by F.Nicolini, Milanand Naples, Ricciardi, 1953.13.3Opere Filosofiche,texts, translations and notes by Paolo Cristofolini, with anIntroduction by Nicola Badaloni, Florence, Sansoni, 1971.13.4Opere Giuridiche,ed. Paolo Cristofolini with an Introduction by Nicola Badaloni,Florence, Sansoni, 1974.13.5The New Science of Giambattista Vico,trans. with an Introduction by T.G. Berlinand M.H.Fisch, Ithaca and London, Cornell University Press, 1948, repr. 1988.13.6The Autobiography of Giambattista Vico,trans. T.G.Bergin and M.H. Fisch, Ithacaand London, Cornell University Press, 1944, repr. 1975.13.7On the Study Methods of Our Time,trans. with an Introduction and notes by ElioGianturco, Indianapolis, Bobbs-Merrill, 1965.13.8On the Most Ancient Wisdom of the Italians, Unearthed from the Origins of theLatin Language, Including the Disputation with the Giornale de’ Letterati d’Italia,trans. with an Introduction and notes by L.M.Palmer, Ithaca and London, CornellUniversity Press, 1988.13.9Vico:Selected Writings,ed. and trans. L.Pompa, Cambridge, Cambridge UniversityPress, 1982.whole human race. In all these circumstances man desires principally his ownutility. Therefore, it is only by divine providence that he can be held within theseinstitutions /dentro tali ordini/ to practice justice as a member of the society of thefamily, the city, and finally of mankind. Unable to attain all the utilities he wishes,he is constrained by these institutions to seek those which are his due: and this iscalled just. That which regulates all human justice is therefore divine justice, whichis administered /ministrata/ by divine providence to preserve human society.(Scienza Nuova,par. 341, [13.5], pp. 101f.)Because of that, Vico adds in the next paragraph (342) that his science must be a rational civiltheology of divine providence (cf. also par. 385). On this question, see S.R.Luft, ‘A GeneticInterpretation of Divine Providence in Vico’s New Science’, Journal of the History ofPhilosophy 30 (1982): 151–69. On the method of the Scienza Nuova Vico is impenetrablyopaque. He claims (n. 7 above) that he is deploying Bacon’s method in human affairs (par.163), but Vico mentions the somewhat atypical Cogitata et Visa insted of, as expected, theNovum Organum. E.McMullin has studied this question in ‘Vico’s Theory of Science’, in[13.20], 60–89. He terms Vico’s method ‘hypothetico-suggestive’ (p. 83).Bibliographies and Journals13.10 Croce, B.Bihliografia vichiana,with additions by F.Nicolini, 2 vols, Naples,Ricciardi 1947–8.13.11 Donzelli, M.Contributo alla bibliografia vichiana(1948–1970), Naples, Guida,1973.13.12 Tagiacozzo, G., Verene, D.P. and Rumble, V.A Bibliography of Vico in English,1884–1984, Philosophy Documentation Center, Ohio, Bowling Green State University,1986.13.13Bolletino del Centro di Studi Vichiani,Naples, 1971–.13.14New Vico Studies,New Jersey, Humanities Press, 1983–.13.15Studi Vichiani,Naples, Guida, 1969–.Collective Works of Criticism13.16Campanella e Vico,Publications of theArchivio di filosofia,Padua, CED AM,1969.13.17Omaggio a Vico,Naples, Morano, 1968.13.18Giambattista Vico: An International Symposium,ed. G.Tagliacozzo andH.V.White, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1969.13.19Giambattista Vico’s Science of Humanity,ed. G.Tagliacozzo and D.Verene,Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976.13.20Vico and Contemporary Thought,ed. G.Tagliacozzo, M.Mooney and D.P. Verene,New Jersey, Humanities Press, 1979, 2 vols; two vols in one, 1981.13.21Vico and Marx: Affinities and Contrasts,ed. G.Tagliacozzo and D.P.Verene, NewJersey, Humanities Press, 1983.Books and Articles(Those articles to be found inCollective Works of Criticism(above) are excluded.):13.22 Amerio, F.Introduzione allö studio di Giambattista Vico,Turin, Società EditriceInternazionale, 1947.13.23——‘Vico e il barocco’,Giornale di metafisica3(1948): 157–63.13.24 Apel, K.O.Die Idee der Sprache in der Tradition des Humanismus von Dante bisVico,Bonn, Bouvier Verlag, 1980 (3rd edn).13.25 Auerbach, E. ‘Sprachliche Beiträge zur Erklärung der derScienza NuovavonGiambattista Vico’,Archivum Romanicum21(1937): 173–84.13.26 Badaloni, N.Introduzione a Giambattista Vico.Milan, Feltrinelli, 1961.13.27——Introduzione a Vico,Roma-Bari, Laterza, 1984.13.28 Barnouw, J. The Relation between the Certain and the True in Vico’s PragmatistConstruction of Human History’,Comparative Literature Studies15(1978):242–62.13.29——‘Vico and the Continuity of Science: the Relation of his Epistemology toBacon and Hobbes’,Isis71(1980): 609–20.13.30 Battistini, A. ‘Vico e l’etimologia mitopoietica’,Lingua e Stile9 (1974): 31–66.13.31 Bellofiore, L.La dottrina de I la Provvidenza in Vico,Padua, CEDAM, 1962.13.32 Berlin, I.Vico and Herder: Two Studies in the History of Ideas,New York, VikingPress, 1976.13.33 Burke, P.Vico,Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1985.13.34 Cantelli, G.Mente, corpo, linguaggio. Saggio sull interpretazione vichiana delmito,Firenze, Sansoni, 1986.13.35 Caponigri, A.Time and Idea. The Theory of History in Giambattista Vico,London,Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1953.13.36——‘Vico and the Theory of History’,Giornale di Metafisica9(1954): 183–97.13.37 Chaix-Ruy, J.La Formation de la pensee philosophique de Giambattista Vico,Gap, L.Jean, 1943.Giambattsita Vico et Villuminisme athée,Paris, Del Duca, 1968.13.38 Child, A.Making and Knowing in Hobbes, Vico and Dewey,Berkeley, Universityof California Press, 1953.13.39 Ciardo, M.Le quattro epoche dello storicismo: Vico, Kant, Hegel, Croce,Bari,Laterza, 1947.13.40 Corsano, A.Giambattista Vico,Bari, Laterza, 1956.13.41——Il pensiero religioso italiano dall’umanesimo al giurisdizionalismo,Bari,Laterza, 1937.13.42——Umanesimo e religione in Giambattista Vico,Bari, Laterza, 1953.13.43 Costa, G.Le antichità germaniche nella cultura italiana da Machiavelli a Vico,Naples, Bibliopolis, 1977.13.44——‘Giambattista Vico e la “natura simpatetica” ’,Giornale critico della filosofiaitaliana47(1968):401–18.13.45——La leggenda dei secoli d’oro nella letteratura italiana,Bari, Laterza, 1972.13.46——‘Vico and Ancient Rhetoric’,Eighteenth Century Studies11(1978): 247–62.13.47 Croce, B.La filosofia di Giambattista Vico,Bari, Laterza, 1911; 6th edn 1962.Trans. R.G.Collingwood asThe Philosophy of G.B.VicoLondon, 1913; repr. NewYork, Russell and Russell, 1964.13.48——Te fonti della gnoseologia vichiana’,Studio sullo Hegel,Bari, Laterza, 1912,1967, pp. 233–59.13.49 De Mas, E. ‘Bacone e Vico’,Filosofia10(1959): 505–59.13.50——‘On the new Method of a New Science: A Study of Giambattista Vico’,Journal of the History of Ideas32(1971): 85–94.13.51 De Santillana, G. ‘Vico and Descartes’,Osiris21 (1950): 565–80.13.52 Fassò, Guido, ‘Genesi storica e genesi logica delia filosofia deliaScienza Nuova’,Rivista internazionale di filosofia del diritto25(1948):319–36.13.53 Fellmann, F.Das Vico-Axiom: Der Mensch macht die Geschichte,Freiburg undMunich, Verlag Karl Alber, 1976.13.54——‘Vicos Theorem der Gleichursprünglichkeit von Theorie und Praxis und diedogmatische Denkform’,Philosophisches Jahrhuch84(1978):259–73.13.55 Flint, R.Vico,Edinburgh and London, W.Blackpool and Sons, 1884.13.56 Focher, F.Vico e Hobbes,Naples, Giannini, 1977.13.57 Fornaca, R.Ilpensiero educativo di Giambattista Vico,Turin, G.Giappichelli,1957–13.58 Fubini, M.Stile e umanità di Giambattista Vico,2nd edn, Naples, Ricciardi, 1965.13.59 Funkenstein, A.Theology and the Scientific Imagination from the Middle Ages tothe Seventeenth Century,Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1986.13.60 Garin, E. ‘Cartesio e l’Italia’,Giornale critico delta filosofia italiana,4(1950):385–405.13.61——Storia della filosofia italiana,3 vols, Turin, Einaudi, 1966.13.62 Gaukroger, S. ‘Vico and the Maker’s Knowledge Principle’,History of PhilosophyQuarterly3(1986): 29–44.13.63 Gentile, G.Studi vichiani,3rd enlarged edn as vol. xvi of theOpère,Florence,Sansoni, 1968.13.64 Grassi, E.Rhetoric as Philosophy,University Park, Pennsylvania State UniversityPress, 1980.13.65 Haddock, B. ‘Vico’s Discovery of the True Homer: A Case Study in HistoricalReconstruction’, Journal of the History of Ideas40(1979):583–602.13.66——Vico’s Political Thought,Swansea, Mortlake Press, 1986.13.67 Hess, M.B. ‘Vico’s Heroic Mataphor’,Metaphysics and Philosophy of Science inthe 17th and 18th Centuries. Essays in Honour ofGerd Buchdahl,ed. R.S. Woolhose,Dordrecht, London and Boston, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1988.13.68 Iannizzotto, M.L’empirismo nella gnoseologia di Giambattista Vico,Padua,CEDAM, 1968.13.69 Klemm, O.Giamhattista Vico als Geschichtsphilosoph und Völkerpsycholog,Leipzig, Engelman, 1906.13.70 Lilla, M.G.B.Vico, The Making of an Anti-Modern,Cambridge, MA and London,Harvard University Press, 1931.13.71 Löwith, K.Meaning in History: the Theological Implications of the Philosophy ofHistory,Chicago, Chicago University Press, 1949.13.72——Vicos Grundsatz: Verum et factum convertuntur: seine theologische Prämisseund deren säkularen Konsequenzen,Heidelberg, C. Winter, 1968.13.73 Mali, J.The Rehabilitation of Myth: Vico’s New Science,Cambridge, CambridgeUniversity Press, 1992.13.74 Manno, A.G.Lo storicismo di Giambattista Vico,Naples, Istituto editoriale delMezzogiorno , 1965.13.75 Manson, R.The Theory of Knowledge of Giambattista Vico: On the Method of theNew Science concerning the Common Nature of the Nations,Hamden, Conn., AnchorBooks, 1969.13.76 Meinecke, F.Die Entstehung des Historismus,4th edn, Munich, Oldenbourg,1959–13.77 Mooney, M.Vico in the Tradition of Rhetoric,Princeton, NJ, Princeton UniversityPress, 1985.13.78 Morrison, J.C. ‘Vico and Spinoza’,Journal of the History of Ideas41(1980): 49–68.13.79——‘Vico’s Doctrine of the Natural Law of the Gentes’,Journal of the History ofPhilosophy16(1978):47–60.13.80 Nicolini, F.Commento storico alla seconda Scienza Nuova,2 vols, Rome, Storia eletteratura 1949–50; repr. Rome, Storia e letteratura, 1978.13.81——Saggi vichiani,Naples, Giannini, 1955.13.82 O’Neill, J. ‘Vico on the Natural Workings of the Mind’,Phenomenology and theHuman Sciences,117–25 (suppl. toPhilosophical Topics12, 1981.13.83 Pérez-Ramos, A. ‘La emergencia del sujeto en las ciencias humanas’,La crisis dela razon,M. Foucaultet al., Murcia, Pub. Universidad de Murcia, 1986, pp. 163–202.13.84 Pompa, L.Vico: A Study of the New Science,Cambridge, Cambridge UniversityPress, 1975; 2nd edn 1990.13.85——Human Nature and Historical Knowledge: Hume,Hegel and Vico, Cambridge,Cambridge University Press, 1990.13.86 Rossi, P.Le sterminate antiquità: Studi vichiani, Pisa, Nistri-Lischi, 1969.13.87——I segni del tempo. Storia della terra e storia delle nazioni da Hooke a Vico,Milan, Feltrinelli, 1979.13.88 Vasoli, C. ‘Topica, retorica e argomentazione nella prima filosofia di Vico’,RevueInternationale de Philosophie33(1979):188–201.13.89 Verene, D.P.Vico’s Science of the Imagination,New York, Cornell UniversityPress, 1981.13.90 Viechtbauer, H.Transzendentale Einsicht und Theorie der Geschichte:Überlegungen zu G.V.Vicos “Liber Metaphysicus”,Munich, Fink, 1977.13.91 Vossenkuhl, W.Wahrheit des Handels. Untersuchungen zum Verhältnis vonWahrheit und Handeln,Bonn, Bouvier Verlag, 1974.13.92 Werner, K.Giambattista Vico als Philosoph und gelehrter Forscher,1879; repr.New York, Burt Franklin, 1962.

  1. vico, giambattista—Vico Giambattista translationItalian philosopher of history. Vico was born in Naples and educated by the Jesuits. From he held the lowly chair of rhetoric at the univers...Philosophy dictionary