The Philosophy of Giambattista Vico

Appendix Iii. the Whole of the Translation Has Been Revised by the

Author.

R. G. C.

OXFORD, 1913.

CONTENTS

I. VICO'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE: FIRST PHASE II. VICO'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE: SECOND PHASE III. INTERNAL STRUCTURE OF THE NEW SCIENCE IV. THE IMAGINATIVE FORM OF KNOWLEDGE (POETRY AND LANGUAGE) V. THE SEMI-IMAGINATIVE FORM OF KNOWLEDGE (MYTH AND RELIGION) VI. THE MORAL CONSCIOUSNESS VII. MORALITY AND RELIGION VIII. MORALITY AND LAW IX. THE HISTORICAL ASPECT OF LAW X. PROVIDENCE XI. THE LAW OF REFLUX XII. METAPHYSICS XIII. TRANSITION TO HISTORY: GENERAL CHARACTER OF VICO'S TREATMENT OF HISTORY XIV. NEW PRINCIPLES FOR THE HISTORY OF OBSCURE AND LEGENDARY PERIODS XV. HEROIC SOCIETY XVI. HOMER AND PRIMITIVE POETRY XVII. THE HISTORY OF ROME AND THE RISE OF DEMOCRACY XVIII. THE RETURN OF BARBARISM: THE MIDDLE AGES XIX. VICO AND THE TENDENCIES OF CONTEMPORARY CULTURE XX. CONCLUSION: VICO AND LATER THOUGHT, PHILOSOPHICAL AND HISTORICAL

APPENDICES

I. ON THE LIFE AND CHARACTER OF G. B. VICO II. THE LATER HISTORY OF VICO'S THOUGHT III. THE SOURCES OF VICO'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE IV. BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

NOTE.--PASSAGES OF VICO'S WORKS TO WHICH ESPECIAL REFERENCE IS MADE IN THE COURSE OF THE EXPOSITION

INDEX OF NAMES

CHAPTER I. Vico's Theory of Knowledge: First Phase

VICO'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE: FIRST PHASE

The earliest phase of Vico's theory of knowledge takes the form of a direct criticism of and antithesis to the Cartesianism which had guided European thought for more than half a century, and was to maintain its supremacy over mind and spirit for another hundred years.

Descartes, as is well known, had placed the ideal of perfect science in geometry, and endeavoured to reform philosophy and every other branch of knowledge upon this model. Now the geometrical method proceeds analytically till it reaches a self-evident truth, and thence by synthetic deduction it advances to more and more complex propositions. Accordingly, if philosophy were to adopt a rigorous scientific method, it also (thought Descartes) must look for a solid foundation in the shape of an elementary and self-evident truth from which to deduce all its subsequent statements, whether theological, metaphysical, physical, or ethical. Thus self-evidence--the "clear and distinct perception or idea"--was the supreme test: immediate inference--the intuitive connexion of thought with existence, cogito with sum-- provided the elementary truth and the foundation of knowledge. By means of the clear and distinct perception, together with the systematic doubt which led him to the cogito, Descartes persuaded himself that he had once and for all made an end of scepticism.

But, by the same argument, all knowledge which had not been or could not be reduced to clear and distinct perception and geometrical deduction was bound to lose in his eyes all value and importance. This included history, as founded upon testimony; observation of nature, when not within the sphere of mathematics; practical wisdom and eloquence, which draw their validity from empirical knowledge of human character; and poetry, with its world of imaginary presentations. Such products of the mind were for Descartes illusions, chaotic visions, rather than knowledge: confused ideas, destined either to become clear and distinct and so no longer to exist in their original nature, or else to drag on a miserable existence unworthy of a philosopher's consideration. The daylight of the mathematical method rendered useless the lamps which, while they guide us in the darkness, throw deceptive shadows.

Vico, unlike the other opponents of Descartes, did not confine himself to or waste time in scandalised outcries at the danger to religion entailed by the subjective method. He did not inquire, like the schoolmen, whether the cogito was or was not a syllogism, and if so whether it was or was not defective. He did not join in the protest of outraged common-sense against the Cartesian contempt of history, rhetoric, and poetry. He went straight to the heart of the question, to Descartes' criterion of scientific truth itself, the principle of self-evidence. While the French philosopher believed himself to have satisfied all the demands of the strictest science, Vico saw that as a matter of fact, in view of the need which he set out to meet, his proposed method gave little or no assistance.

Fine knowledge, says Vico, this of the clear and distinct idea! That I think what I think is certainly an indubitable fact; but it has by no means the appearance of a scientific statement. Any idea, however false, may seem self-evident: that I think it so does not give it the force of knowledge. That "he who thinks, exists" was a fact well known to Plautus's Sosia, who expressed this conviction in almost the identical words of the Cartesian philosophy: "but when I think, I certainly exist" (sed quom cogito, equidem certo sum). But the sceptic will always reply to a Sosia or a Descartes that he has no doubt as to thought; he will even strongly maintain that whatever seems to him cogent is certain, and will uphold it against all objections; and that he has no doubt as to existence: in fact, he is seeking after it in the right way by suspending judgment and not adding to the obscurity of facts other obscurities arising from opinions. But while asserting all this he will still maintain that the certitude of his thought and of his existence is the certitude not of science but of consciousness, and of common consciousness at that. Clear and distinct perception is so far from being science that since, owing to Cartesianism, the principle has been applied to physics, our knowledge of nature has become no more certain. Descartes tried to leap from the plane of common consciousness to that of science: he fell back into common consciousness again without having touched his scientific ideal.

But in what does scientific truth consist, if not in immediate consciousness? How does science differ from simple consciousness? What is the criterion, or, in other words, what is the condition which makes science possible? Clearness and distinctness do not take us a step forward. The formulation of an elementary truth does not solve the problem. The question concerns not a primary truth, but the form which truth must have to enable us to recognise it for scientific or real truth.

In meeting this question, Vico justified his criticism of the inadequacy of the Cartesian criterion by appealing to a principle which at first sight may seem trite and obvious. It is trite not because of the historic theory with which Vico associated it, a theory later refuted by himself: not, that is, because it belongs to one of the earliest strata of Italian philosophy; but in the sense that it was common to and practically inseparable from Christian thought. To a Christian who declares every day his belief in a God Almighty, Omniscient, Maker of heaven and earth, nothing is more familiar than the assertion that God alone can fully know all things, because he alone is their creator. The primal truth, Vico repeats, is in God, because God is the primal creator. It is an infinite truth because he is the maker of all things, and absolute because it displays to him the internal and external qualities of things, all of which he contains in himself.

This same principle of religion and theology had been already invoked in a philosophical context by certain sceptics, as a weapon against the presumptuous claims of human knowledge. Francisco Sanchez, for example, in his Quod nihil scitur (1581), in discussing the difficulty of knowing the nature and powers of the soul, had observed that if man could have this knowledge in a perfect degree he would be like God, or rather he would be God himself: since it is impossible "that one should know perfectly things which he has not created, nor could God have created things of which he had not perfect foreknowledge, nor ruled them when created: he himself therefore, being alone the perfect wisdom, knowledge, and intellect, penetrates all things, is wise concerning all things, knows all things, and understands all things, because he is all things and in all things, and all things are he and in him" (perfecte cognoscere quis quae non creavit, nec Deus creare potuisset nec creata regere quae non perfecte praecognovisset: ipse ergo solus sapientia cognitio intellectus perfectus omnia penetrat omnia sapit omnia cognoscit omnia intelligit, quia ipse omnia est et in omnibus, omniaque ipse sunt et in ipso). But Sanchez appeals to this thought only in passing, and without grasping its philosophical import or realising that his hand was resting upon a treasure; while Vico for the first time drew from the praise of the infinite power and wisdom of God, and from their contrast with the limited faculties of man, the universal principle of his theory of knowledge, that the condition under which a thing can be known is that the knower should have made it, that the true is identical with the created: verum ipsum factum.

This, he explained, is precisely what is meant by saying that science is to know by causes, per causas scire. Since a cause is that which has no need of anything external in order to produce its effect, it is the genus or mode of a thing: to know the cause is to be able to realise the thing, to deduce it from its cause and create it. In other words, it is an ideal repetition of a process which has been or is being practically performed. Cognition and action must be convertible and identical, just as with God intellect and will are convertible and form one single unity.

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