Vico's New Science of the Intersubjective World

Vittorio Hösle, Francis R. Hittinger

• Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9780268100315
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Italian History
• Index: History

Among the classics of the history of philosophy, the Scienza nuova ( New Science ) by Giambattista Vico (1668–1744) was largely neglected and generally misunderstood during the author's lifetime. From the nineteenth century onwards Vico's views found a wider audience, and today his influence is widespread in the humanities and social sciences. The New Science is often taught in courses at colleges and universities, both in philosophy and Italian departments and in general humanities courses. Despite the excellent English translations of this enigmatic book and numerous studies in English of Vico, many sections of the work remain challenging to the modern reader. Vico's New Science of the Intersubjective World offers both an in-depth analysis of all the important ideas of the book and an evaluation of their contribution to our present understanding of the social world.

In the first chapter, Vittorio Hösle examines Vico's life, sources, and writings. The second and third chapters discuss the concerns and problems of the Scienza nuova. The fourth chapter traces the broader history of Vico's reception. Hösle facilitates the understanding of many passages in the work as well as the overarching structure of its claims, which are often dispersed over many sections. Hösle reformulates Vico's vision in such a way that it is not only of historical interest but may inspire ongoing debates about the nature of the humanities and social sciences as well as many other issues on which Vico sheds light, from the relation of poetry and poetics to the development of law. This book will prepare students and scholars for a precise study of the Scienza nuova, equipping them with the necessary categories and context and familiarizing them with the most important problems in the critical debate on Vico's philosophy.

THREE

Structure and Themes of the Scienza nuova

Material Aspects

3.1 PRIMITIVE HUMANS

No Christian thinker has ever dared to compare primitive humans to the beasts like Vico. Finetti’s polemic against Vico (see below, p. 169) exemplifies the irritated reaction of orthodox Catholics. Vignoli (1879), on the other hand, sought early on to connect Vico to Darwin. Vico’s interpretation of primitive humanity is actually quite similar to that of Darwin: calling the first human beings “stupid, insensate, and horrid beasts” (for example, ³SN §374, IV, 1, p. 145), Vico explicitly asserts that they found themselves in “an utterly bestial and brutish state” after the universal flood (³SN §369, IV, 1, p. 141).¹ But it would be fruitless to look for biologically motivated reasoning in the SN: beyond containing no concrete comparisons between human and animal behavior, Vico even somehow manages to align his thesis of man’s bestialization with the book of Genesis. Adam had been created in the image of God (³SN §13, IV, 1, p. 13; ³SN §51, IV, 1, p. 42; ³SN §310, IV, 1, p. 112; ³SN §371, IV, 1, p. 143), but after the abandonment of the true religion and its sanitary laws, after the universal flood, all the descendants of Noah, with the exception of the Jews, had degenerated into a bestial state and, having become beings of a gigantic stature, wandered in search of water, food, and women in the large virgin forest (³SN §13, IV, 1, p. 12f.; ³SN §169ff., IV, 1, p. 83f.; ³SN §192ff., IV, 1, p. 88f.; ³SN §369ff., IV, 1, p. 141ff.; ³SN §399, IV, 1, p. 158f.). From this point onward, Vico’s ideas more or less concur with modern theories of human evolution.

The humanization of the “bestioni” (wild beasts) begins with the first bolts to pierce the sky one or two hundred years after the universal flood.² This unexpected appearance instills an enormous terror in primitive men: they are induced to lift their gaze to the sky, and they interpret it—projecting their own violent way of communicating onto it—as a divine being that wants to speak with them (³SN §377, IV, 1, p. 147f.). Fear of an indeterminate divinity—which is the root of religion (³SN §502f., IV, 1, p. 217f.)—moderates their wild passions and teaches them to control their impulses (³SN §340, IV, 1, p. 124; ³SN §504, IV, 1, p. 218f.; ³SN §1098, IV, 2, p. 157f.): fear alone can subjugate the impulses. That also goes for the tendency to nomadic wandering: humans become sedentary. This is particularly important, however, for the sexual impulse. As men are afraid of satisfying the procreative instinct in the presence of the sky, they snatch a woman and drag her into a cave, where—from that moment onward—they live together with her in lasting partnership. This constitutes the beginning of marriage, in which physical union is influenced by fear of a divinity. Vico locates the two links that bind society in sense of shame³ and religion (³SN §504, IV, 1, p. 219); in fact, in religion, in the celebration of matrimony, and in funeral rites, he sees the three basic anthropological traits that distinguish humans from animals (³SN §10ff., IV, 1, p. 11ff.; ³SN §332ff., IV, 1, p. 118ff.).⁴

Vico’s foundation is empirical: he does not attempt—which would not otherwise be overly difficult—to deduce such characteristics from the idea of a finite spiritual being.⁵ Vico must therefore stay faithful to the theory according to which those three characteristics are actually found in all peoples; he particularly concerns himself with a polemic against Bayle and the “modern travelers” who, in order to sell books, have argued there are peoples bereft of religion (³SN §334, IV, 1, p. 118f.).⁶ In the cultural context of the time, this polemic must have made Vico look like a reactionary thinker, whom no new discovery could move to question his preconceived ideas. Regarding marriage, Vico does not, however, take monogamy as an anthropological constant (although he presumes monogamous marriage for primitive humans), but refers only to nuptial rites that precede coitus. He mentions, particularly, the prohibition against incest, whose origin is not found in nature generally, as Xenophon’s Socrates had postulated (Memorabilia, IV, 4, 19ff.), but rather in human nature (³SN §336, IV, 1, p. 120).⁷ Funeral rituals originate, finally, from the faith in immortality of the human soul. At tombs the feeling of the numinous reaches a particular intensity; they were the religious places par excellence (³SN §529, IV, 1, p. 235ff.).

Vico’s nonprejudicial analysis of the deep relationships between sexuality and culture is surprising.⁸ His vicinity to Freud is evident: for both, human institutions, and even spirit, develop from the sublimation of sexuality. As opposed to thinkers like Herbert Marcuse, for Vico a society that made possible the gratification of every sexual inclination would certainly not be ideal: a society of this sort would simply not be a human society. Every kind of creativity would be paralyzed, since there would not be any restrained sexual energy capable of being transformed into spiritual development.

Thus it is not surprising that for Vico marriage and family, which go hand in hand with the sedentary lifestyle, are not only the second most ancient institution (after religion), but constitute also the basis of human society and the state in the course of all history (³SN §11, IV, 1, p. 12). A great danger resides in the dissolution of marriage; the Romans introduced divorce only in a late age (³SN §507, IV, 1, p. 220);⁹ Vico explicitly praises Augustus’s laws on marriage (³SN §603, IV, 1, p. 285). But, even if he calls it the first friendship known to the world (³SN §554, IV, 1, p. 250f.), Vico is far from a romantic idealization of marriage. Marriage in the primitive age is based on violence, as the lingering of the custom of the seizure of women shows, even if it now has become only symbolic (³SN §510, IV, 1, p. 221). One cannot speak of symmetry in the position of spouses: the woman enters into the family of the husband, must convert to his religion (³SN §506f., IV, 1, p. 219f.), and is even treated like a slave; in this regard nothing has changed in many parts of the old world and in almost all of the new world (³SN §671, IV, 1, p. 324). The most ancient family is strictly patriarchal. Incomprehensible to the SN is the idea of “mother-right”—and, even more so, of matriarchy—at the origins of historical development, as has been elaborated by Johann Jakob Bachofen (a scholar akin to Vico in many respects) and partially shared by Lewis H. Morgan and Friedrich Engels. Vico, on the contrary, considers the strict patriarchy of the Romans as a universal institution, which was softened only in the age of men (³SN §582, IV, 1, p. 269f.). The paterfamilias was diviner, priest, and king (³SN §250, IV, 1, p. 98). He could dispose of the life and property of his children (³SN §256, IV, 1, p. 99; ³SN §556, IV, 1, p. 252): unwanted children were exposed or sold (³SN §517, IV, 1, p. 225f.; ³SN §566, IV, 1, p. 259f.). Children were not holders of rights, and not only not at the juridical level: the cyclopic fathers were not even afraid at the emotional level of beating them bloody in order to temper them, while the delight which we today experience for children is the product of a later refinement (³SN §670, IV, 1, p. 324). In particular, archaic fathers cared nothing for female children, which explains their exclusion from hereditary succession (³SN §657, IV, 1, p. 315; ³SN §991, IV, 2, p. 96).

The religion of the primitive age was hard and rude like the archaic family, which is based on it: it is, in fact, the sexual impulse that leads to marriage, but the stability of marriage is ensured only by religion (³SN §14, IV, 1, p. 14; ³SN §554, IV, 1, p. 250f.). Vico explains religion in anthropological terms,¹⁰ even if it is providence that acts in the causal processes that led to the birth of religion. Thus the root of religion is the simple need humans have for help—humans who in their condition of necessity come to the idea of something higher (³SN §339, IV, 1, p. 124; ³SN §562, IV, 1, p. 256). According to Vico, who anticipates in this case the analogous ideas of Ludwig Feuerbach, and in particular Edward Burnett Tylor and Wilhelm Wundt, at the basis of the first form of religion there is an animistic disposition of primitive humans, who consider the whole environment that surrounds them animated and project the emotions which agitate them onto it (³SN §186f., IV, 1, p. 87; ³SN §375, IV, 1, p. 145f.). Everything that humans saw or even themselves made, they attributed to divinities (³SN §69, IV, 1, p. 50; ³SN §630, IV, 1, p. 301; ³SN §922, IV, 2, p. 55), who assumed, in turn, human nature (³SN §967, IV, 2, p. 82). To phenomena they did not understand but which nonetheless awakened their curiosity, primitive humans gave an anthropomorphic interpretation; and thus still today the populace says that a magnet “is in love” with iron. It is in fact a characteristic of the human mind to make itself its own measure in relation to the world when it does not understand it (³SN §180ff., IV, 1, p. 86; ³SN §377, IV, 1, p. 147f.). Primitive humans believed in the gods that they themselves thought up, even if they were the ones who invented them: “Fingunt simul creduntque” (They imagine a thing and at once believe it), he says in ³SN §376, IV, 1, p. 147, alluding to a passage in the Annals of Tacitus (V, 10). Vico compares the creative and inventive nature of primitive humans even to that of God. In any case, while God creates things by knowing them in his pure intellect, in primitive humans the creative faculty is fantasy, from which the myths take their origins (³SN §376, IV, 1, p. 146f.; ³SN §916, IV, 2, p. 51).

This world, in which everything is divine, was anything but happy and enviable. In fact, a world in which nothing is neutral and objective is a world threatened on all sides by something troubling, in which one cannot rely upon anything, in which the least rustle of leaves can mean the cruel desires of a god. But archaic humans would not be humans if they did not try to put some sort of order into this world, to decipher those meanings that humans themselves put there. Divination represents the attempt to understand the language of the gods, to recognize and follow their will. The first wisdom was, for this reason, composed of the interpretation of oracles and auspices (³SN §365, IV, 1, p. 137f.; ³SN §379ff., IV, 1, p. 148ff.; ³SN §525, IV, 1, p. 232f.). Magic arose from this (³SN §475, IV, 1, p. 203; ³SN §648, IV, 1, p. 312).

The orders of the gods correspond, in their cruelty, to the fear of the men that question them; fear and savagery are complementary (³SN §190, IV, 1, p. 87). In the Vichian conception of the sacred, the “numen tremendum” (terrifying divine power) is undoubtedly dominant. The commands of the latter are, on one hand, emotively interiorized: Vico interprets the myth of Actaeon in the sense that Actaeon, having violated the religion of the fountains, had been overwhelmed with the bite of conscience (³SN §528, IV, 1, p. 235). Then again, archaic society ensures that its norms are respected through the most abhorrent sanctions. Vico forcefully describes the bloody human sacrifices and the ruthless religious rituals of the primitive age. He reminded a civilized Europe, which was shocked by accounts of the Aztecs’ human sacrifices, that such sacrifices had belonged to the age of the gods of all peoples, including that of the Greeks and the Romans¹¹ (even if he does not mention, as was to be expected, Abraham and Jephthah). The sacrifice of Iphigenia by Agamemnon is only one of the many examples of that fanatical superstition diffused in all the nations and cannot arouse wonder if one thinks of the situation of slavery in which children were then held (³SN §191, IV, 1, p. 88; ³SN §517f., IV, 1, p. 225ff.). Even the borders were consecrated with human sacrifices (³SN §550, IV, 1, p. 247ff.; ³SN §776, IV, 1, p. 378). Vico discusses the question, in detail, whether a positive function can be ascribed to such impious devotion,¹² and he responds affirmatively. Setting aside every edifying polemic against the pagans, he argues that divine providence itself allowed the cruel and false religions of the pagans, since the constraint of the great ferociousness of primitive humans and their development toward humanity could begin only in this way. Only pure terror before the Molochs and Saturns taught the soul of archaic man to respect those institutions without which human society could not subsist. Without superstition, on the basis of atheism, the state would never have come into being (³SN §177f., IV, 1, p. 85; ³SN §518, IV, 1, p. 227; ³SN §523, IV, 1, p. 231). The functionalist analysis of Vico is truly remarkable—just like sociology of the systems-theory type, he distinguishes implicitly between latent and manifest function. Thus in one passage he refers to the aims of providence to explain the fact that archaic man had an objectively indefensible concept of providence, to which he always appealed when something incomprehensible happened. Only in this way, in fact, were archaic humans able to acquiesce in the unchangeable (³SN §948, IV, 2, p. 67).¹³ Analogously, he insists, regarding duels and ordeals, that only faith in the absolute validity of their outcome, and thus in the right of the strongest, had been able to constitute a safeguard against infinite conflicts and wars (³SN §27, IV, 1, p. 23f.; ³SN §923, IV, 2, p. 55; ³SN §963f., IV, 2, p. 79f.).

Religion, as has been noted, guarantees the stability of institutions.¹⁴ Vico understood the importance of the latter for archaic humans like no other thinker of the eighteenth century, and anticipated many of Arnold Gehlen’s ideas. Vico has only jeers and derision for the theoretical fiction of contractualism: against the genetic aspect of contractualistic theory, he affirms that the division of landed property was not based upon rational conventions (³SN §550, IV, 1, p. 247f.) and, agains...