Giambattista Vico

Giambattista Vico, Giambattista Vigo or Giovanbattista Vico (Naples, June 23, 1668 - ibid, January 23, 1744) was a Neapolitan lawyer and philosopher of history. Notable for the concept of truth of it as the result of doing ( verum ipsum factum ). Vico criticized the expansion of modern rationalism, was an apologist for Classical Antiquity, a forerunner of systematic and complex thought, and the first to expose the foundations of semiotics and the social sciences.

His most important work is the Scienza nuova (New Science), which aims to carry out a systematic organization of the humanities as a single science that records and explains the historical cycles by which societies rise and fall. It was first published in 1725 and after expansions and restructurings, in 1730 and 1744, the year of his death.

The great originality of his thought has been valued in the XX century, at the mercy of Benedetto Croce, Isaiah Berlin, Harold Bloom, Ángel Faretta, Hayden White and María Zambrano.

Biography

Despite his humble origins (he was the son of a bookseller), he studied law and was a professor of rhetoric for more than forty years.

He had aspired to a more prestigious chair of jurisprudence, but had to limit himself to teaching rhetoric, which entailed lower stipends and which Vico supplemented for years by offering private lessons.

The role of tutor in the house of the Marquis de Rocca, in the castle of Vatolla in Cilento, contributed significantly to his training, a role he fulfilled from 1689 to 1695 and which gave him access to the impressive library of his guest in the where there were works by Augustine of Hippo, Ficino, Pico della Mirandola, including Giovanni Botero and Jean Bodin, natural law theorists, and Tacitus.

From his activity as a teacher come the Six Orations inaugural, written for the opening of the academic years that ran from 1699 to 1707.

In his Autobiography, published in 1725, Vico cites metaphysics stemming from Platonic ideas, the realism of the historian Tacitus, the method of inductive of Francis Bacon, the jurist Hugo Grotius regarding the relations between philosophy and philology.

Its manifest purpose is to relate the ideal world to the real one, aligning philosophy —which deals with truth— with philology —which deals with certainty as a historical and documentary method—, in what it concerns the investigation of the ideal genesis of the civil world.

It was proposed to formulate the principles of the historical method, based on three premises:

• Certain historical periods have similar characteristics among themselves, although the details vary.
• It establishes an order in the historical cycles: brute force, heroic force, justice, dazzling originality, destructive reflection, opulence, abandonment and waste.
• History is not repeated, they are not closed cycles, rather a growing spiral that creates new elements.

His theses on the different evolution of historical periods later influenced the works of Montesquieu, Auguste Comte and Karl Marx.

Work

Principi d'una scienza nuova intorno alla natura delle Nazioni.

He was the author of:

• Principles of History Philosophy
• Principi d'una scienza nuova intorno alla natura delle Nazioni (1725) (known in Spanish as Principles of new science o «Principles of new science. About the common nature of the nations, in this third edition corrected, clarified and notably by the same author» (note: the third edition is considered the final version).

• De nostri temporis studiorum rationeNaples 1708
• From antiquissima Italorum sapientia ex linguae Latinae originibus eruenda libri threeNaples 1710
• Institutiones oratoriae, 1711
• Prima risposta, 1711 (responsive to objections to the Liber metaphysicus)
• Seconda risposta, 1712
• De rebus gestis Antonii Caraphaei, 1716 (Antonio Carafa)
• From universi iuris one principle et fine oneNaples 1720
• De constantia iurisprudentis, 1721
• Principj di una scienza nuova d'intorno alla commune natura delle NazioniNaples 1725
• Vita di Giambattista Vico scritta da sé medesimo, in: Angelo Calogerà: Raccolta di opuscoli scientifici e filologici I, Venedig 1728, pp. 145-256
• Cinque libri de' principj di una scienza nuova d'intorno alla commune natura delle NazioniNaples 1730 (2th version)
• Principj di scienza nuova d'intorno alla commune natura delle Nazioni, Naples 1744 (3rd version, extended)

The principle of verum-factum

The starting point of Vico's philosophy is the question of truth, which for Descartes was offered to man within the scope of those clear and distinct ideas that were "evident" to him.

Vico must firmly oppose this rationalist conception that, in his view, disregards creativity, which constitutes the most properly human faculty. Thus, according to his famous statement, « Verum et factum reciprocantur seu convertuntur »: that is, the true and the fact become one another and coincide.

This is the principle of Vico's philosophy, which establishes the link between truth and production, according to which the only truth that can be known lies in the results of the creative action, of production.

Because of this, moreover, only God knows the totality of the world, insofar as he continuously creates it; Only the humblest position of demiurge of history and architect of his own destiny is reserved for man, his history and life being the only possible objects of his knowledge insofar as they are his products. In the same way, the other field in which he can reach the truth is that of mathematics, of which, in a certain sense, he is also a producer.

Vision of history

Monument to Vico, Naples.

All his doctrine, all his points of view regarding knowledge and history are elaborated in opposition to Cartesianism —as has been said— and to the conception of his time that made physics the paradigmatic science. His approach, according to which the human being can properly know what is the product of his doing, leads him to maintain that Nature, a divine work, can be thought, but not "understood." Only God, who has made everything, can have a total understanding of everything.^{[citation needed]}

The things that man does are mathematics and history, and both are the orb in which human knowledge can move, properly. History —a position far removed from its historical epoch— is the true human realm.^{[citation needed]}

There is an ideal story arranged by providence, around which particular stories move. The course is then divine, and follows the repetition of three successive ages: the divine age, which is theocratic and priestly; the heroic age, gained by arbitrariness and violence, and the human age, which is reasonable and moderate.^{[citation needed ]}

Each of these ages, also considered as childhood, youth and maturity, have a unity of style and a coherent correspondence in all the forms of their manifestations, from government structures to modes of expression. ^{[citation required]}

Just because a particular story goes through all three stages, ending in the human age, doesn't mean it's closed; as what is now called the "end of history," or as the apocalypse of San Juan. Human life wants to last and pursues a continuous rebirth of peoples.^{[citation required]}

Influence

This doctrinal attitude of the philosopher is very surprising in a period in which Cartesian thought was not just another thought among others. Vico's thinking is a thought that was only recognized much later. The approach of physical science cannot get to the bottom of the real. And in this recognition of the importance of the historical, Vico anticipates the spirit of romanticism.

But although there are somewhat similar themes between his doctrine and those of Hegel, Marx and Comte, Vico differs from them in that there is no final closing or closure of history. In Hegel, history ends in the absolute development of the Idea, in its culmination in the Prussian State, or, roughly speaking, in himself. In Marx, in the installation of communism, after the dictatorship of the proletariat that establishes socialism. In Comte, with the maturation of humanity, until reaching the positive stage.

Vico's conception presents greater similarities with the positions of Fichte and Schelling, and even more with the circular vision that is typical of oriental philosophies, according to which in history there is no authentic progress, but, by the contrary, a return of the always equal cycles.