Giambattista Vico

1668-1744

Giambattista Vico 1668-1744 Italian philosopher, Lawyer, historian,

student of ancient Rome, rhetorician born in Naples, Italy, June 23, 1668; d.

there, Jan. 22 or 23, 1744 attended a Jesuit school, and was for a

time enrolled in the law school of the University of Naples

first intellectual influences were Plato and Machiavelli and he was especially adept in the fields of jurisprudence, linguistics and history.

Giambattista Vico 1668-1744 His first important lecture, "On the Method

of the Studies of Our Time," was printed in 1709 and was followed immediately by another lecture, "On the Most Ancient Knowledge of the Italians.”

In 1600 he was elected professor of rhetoric at Naples

Vico Designed a “new science,” quite different from

Descartes

Vico's work has attracted attention for the modern study of rhetoric, language, poetry, architecture, aesthetics, law, moral philosophy, politics, education, metaphysics, society, culture and history.

Vico's thought has importance for the full range of problems within the sphere of humane letters and the study of the self and of social institutions.

Vico Argued that rhetoric, not reason, was the

basis of social life, and that the growing hegemony of scientific thinking threatened to undermine common beliefs and values (Herrick 176).

Feared the domination of science

Sought answers about human experience in poetry and mythology

Vico

Argued that language originated with rhetorical devices native to human imagination and maintained that language allowed people to impose order on existence, create meaning, and establish society.

His philosophy focused on human history

In his New Science, he argued that the historical method could be as exact as math

Vico & The New Science The New Science is clearly a philosophy of

history

here Vico presents the principles of humanity and gives an account of the stages common to the development of all societies in their historical life

He also shows how all human thought and action is connected to imagination and memory as well as to reason.

Vico & The New Science It is also an attack on Cartesian philosophy.

Vico believed that Descartes' ideas were exclusively oriented toward mathematics and the physical sciences.

According to Vico, Descartes neglected other branches of the human experience -- art, law, and history.

Vico & The New Science Held that rhetoric was essential to all the arts

and all human ways of making sense of the world

Was fascinated by the processes through which the human mind learns

Advanced a theory of the relationship among language, thought, and experience based on four tropes

Vico & The New Science Vico attacked three fundamental principles

of Cartesian philosophy:

the appeal to self-consciousness as the basis of all knowledge -- the cogito;

the belief that God's existence could be proven a priori, that is, prior to experience; and

the reliance on a method of clear and distinct ideas as the universal criterion of truth.

Vico’s Critique By 1720, this criticism was not really that much

of a surprise. John Locke had already demolished Descartes in

1690, and even the French philosophers who admired Descartes for his work, could only criticize him in light of what they understood about Locke and Newton.

For Vico, there may be ideas that are clear and distinct, but these ideas could subsequently turn out to be false.

Vico’s Critique And although mathematical propositions

satisfied the Cartesian criteria of self-evident truths, certitude is not to be found in self-evidence, but in the fact that mathematical systems are man-made.

So Vico, skeptical of Descartes, cast doubt on the greatest 17th century doubter of them all.

The epistemology which Vico addressed in opposition to Descartes, is the foundation upon which his revolutionary philosophy of history was built.

Vico’s Critique Descartes neglected history altogether --

compared to science and mathematics, history was a poor thing indeed. Vico, however, thought differently.

The historian could achieve a more profound knowledge than the natural philosopher. Nature was not made by man -- it was external to man, outside him.

In the case of history, by contrast, the world to be studied and comprehended is the human world -- the result of human will, success and failure, loves and hates.

Vico’s Critique In considering the course of human history, Vico

was ahead of his time. He did not wish to suggest that we interpret the past in terms of our own characteristic purposes, interests and ideas. This is what Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) had done.

Vico acknowledged his debt to Hobbes but he also believed that Hobbes was guilty of an error.

By discussing the origins of human society, the origins of civil society, the social contract and the state of nature, Hobbes assumed that human nature was a fixed entity.

Vico’s Critique In other words, Hobbes assumed that men, living

in some state of nature, that is, before civil government, had mental powers and outlooks essentially the same as men of the 17th century.

Vico called this a "pseudo-myth." Hobbes and others had created a false picture of how early man lived, thought and behaved.

Rejecting all these misconceptions in a flash, Vico argued that man is a being who can only be understood historically.

Vico's approach, then, was the opposite of both Hobbes and Descartes.

Vico’s Critique He rejected the belief that all men have looked

at themselves and their world in exactly the same way.

Once he recognized this, the task and scope of historical investigation took on profound methodological implications.

The materials for reaching historical understanding were close at hand -- for Vico, they are to be found above all in language and in myths, fables and traditions which have been handed down from earlier times.

Vico’s Critique

Historical study requires not only a high degree of skill -- study also require that the historian embrace and imaginative capacity for recapturing the past (empathy) -- a past that is vastly different from the present of the historian.

One of Vico's most crucial insights lay in his claim that the various aspects of a society's life at any given stage of its history form a coherent pattern and are intrinsically connected with one another.

Vico’s Critique

With a specific art form or religion go a certain type of political or economic organization, a certain set of laws, a collection of manners, styles of thought and so on.

He incorporated all of this in his cyclical theory of historical development.

Vico & The New Science Locates "facts" not in the clear and distinct

perception or indisputablecertainty of the Cogito, but in the identity of truth and fact as that which is made or realized by man.

"The facts" are historical as human design progresses in ascending and descending movements.

No greater certainty is possible than when a person narrates and explains what he has himself done.

This holds for sciences and metaphysics.

Vico & The New Science “Language has a prominent role in the realization of

the state and politics, religion and culture, the moral order and legal system, and is the design of modern science.

According to Vico the human spirit (ingenium) did not form language, but was formed by it.

Man is assigned the task of passing on and refining language: the world in which we now live has been unlocked by the mythical, poetic and later the objective, rational word.

Vico & The New Science

Outstanding speakers are those able to preserve, develop and transform this world.

The Cartesians were against historical science, myth and poetry, rhetoric as having anything to do with science.

Vico argued that they have everything to do with it: that history is the best empiricism, that poetry offers the most enjoyment of life, that the rhetorical word constructs and displays the world.

Vico’s work was largely ignored, outside of Italy, until Croce in early 1900's, Rosenstock-Huessy in the mid-1900's, and Grassi in the late 1900's.

Vico & The New Science In language:

we use communication to share our experience. rhetoric (pragmatic language based on

probabilities) is as essential to human relations as math is to the physical. (Is physical geometry appropriate to social life?)

passions must be stirred for right leadership Invention = topoi probability essential Cartesian certainty doesn't appeal to all: father

of the hypothesis

Vico & The New Science

In language:

"historical" science: that civilized nations proceed cyclically-- that nature is not static--a fact that the Cartesians have missed.

that math is as man-made as is language. Therefore, is no more reliable than are scientifically historical narratives.

Vico

• "The facts" are historical as human design progresses in ascending and descending movements.

• No greater certainty is possible than when a person narrates and explains what he has himself done.

• This holds for sciences and metaphysics. "Language has a prominent role in the realization of the state and politics, religion and culture, the moral order and legal system, and is the design of modern science.

Vico

few 18th or 19th century thinkers read or even new of Vico's New Science.

He did not influence Enlightenment thought in general.

Yet his ideas clearly fit the patterns of the Age of Reason itself.

His insights were generated from his study of law, legal theory, language and above all, history.

Vico

Many scholars now argue that we ought to view Vico not as an intellectual father of the Enlightenment, but rather as a thinker who anticipated -- though did not directly influence -- thinkers such as Herder, Hegel and Marx.

Thanks to Giambattista Vico, our view of human history as well as our view of human nature have been enriched and transformed.

He believed that the historian must look to the past and understand it in collective and institutional as well as personal (empathetic) terms (thus anticipating much of 19th century historicism).

Vico

Vico showed that the economic and class structure of society was crucially relevant to the formation of dominant ideologies (clearly anticipating Marx).

Lastly, Vico showed that the past should be understood sympathetically -- the historian should not judge the past according to present standards and values.

The past ought to be examined in light of its historical context (the "pastness of the past").