Verum-factum and Practical Wisdom in the Early Writings of Giambattista Vico

Journal of the History of Ideas

Volumn 59, Issue 1, 1998, Pages 53-72

  Miner, Robert C ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 0346932888     PISSN: 00225037     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/3654054     Document Type: Article

References (37)

1. 2), 277.
2. 2), 277.
3. 2), 277.
4. References to Vico's texts are parenthetical, by section and subsection. SR=De nostri temporis studiorum ratione. A=De antiquissima Italorum sapientia. Citations to the Vita refer to the page number in Autobiography of Giambattista Vico, tr. M. H. Fisch and T. G. Bergin (Ithaca, 1944). Vico's early works are cited from Opere filosofiche, ed. Paolo Cristofolini (Florence, 1971), with Italian translations on facing pages.
5. References to Vico's texts are parenthetical, by section and subsection. SR=De nostri temporis studiorum ratione. A=De antiquissima Italorum sapientia. Citations to the Vita refer to the page number in Autobiography of Giambattista Vico, tr. M. H. Fisch and T. G. Bergin (Ithaca, 1944). Vico's early works are cited from Opere filosofiche, ed. Paolo Cristofolini (Florence, 1971), with Italian translations on facing pages.
6. Cf. John Milbank, The Religious Dimension in the Thought of Giambattista Vico 1668-1744: Part 1, The Early Metaphysics (Lewiston, N.Y., 1991), 316.
7. John Dunn, Locke (Cambridge, 1984), vii.
8. See (e.g.) Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue, 150; John McDowell, "Virtue and Reason," Monist, 62 (1979), 336.
9. See (e.g.) Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue, 150; John McDowell, "Virtue and Reason," Monist, 62 (1979), 336.
10. Descartes, Discours de la méthode, ed. Charles Adam and Paul Tannery (11 vols.; Paris, 1964), VI, 8; Discourse on Method, tr. D. A. Cress (Indianapolis, 1980), 4-5.
11. Descartes, Discours de la méthode, ed. Charles Adam and Paul Tannery (11 vols.; Paris, 1964), VI, 8; Discourse on Method, tr. D. A. Cress (Indianapolis, 1980), 4-5.
12. On the history of this topos from Aquinas through the humanists to Vico, see Giuseppe Giarrizzo, Vico, la storia e la politica (Naples, 1981), 146-74.
13. Angela-Maria Jacobelli-Isoldi, G. B. Vico: La vita e le opere (Bologna, 1960), 175, finds in Vico's entire oeuvre "due motivi, quello della esaltazione e quello della mortificazione della natura umana," motives which may illuminate the nature of the reference to Pascal in the Vita.
14. The phrase belongs to Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue, 216.
15. Loci communes and sedes argumentorum are assimilated in Cicero (Topica, 1.5), but the metaphors are not identical. See Joan Marie Lechner, Renaissance Concepts of the Commonplaces (New York, 1962), 131 and 147-52; Quentin Skinner, Reason and Rhetoric in the Philosophy of Hobbes (Cambridge, 1996), 111-20.
16. Loci communes and sedes argumentorum are assimilated in Cicero (Topica, 1.5), but the metaphors are not identical. See Joan Marie Lechner, Renaissance Concepts of the Commonplaces (New York, 1962), 131 and 147-52; Quentin Skinner, Reason and Rhetoric in the Philosophy of Hobbes (Cambridge, 1996), 111-20.
17. Thus in Seconda Risposta, 4, Vico commends Herbert of Cherbury's De veritate on the grounds that it is "veramente altro non è che una topica trasportata agli usi de' fisici sperimental."
18. This is the Vico familiar to us from Berlin and Gadamer, among others. But, according to John Milbank (The Religious Dimension, I, 158), such interpreters tend to overlook Vico's avowals, in texts early and late, that his writings are composed on a geometric paradigm.
19. Jacobelli-Isoldi, finds analogies between the desired unions of topica and critica, of sapientia, prudentia, eloquentia, and the universal and particular (G. B. Vico: La vita e le opere, 180). But the "essential integration" of topica and critica that she speaks of is not achieved in the De ratione, as Botturi clearly realizes. See Francesco Botturi, La sapienza della storia: Giambattista Vico e la filosofica pratica (Milan, 1991), 43-47, 68-69.
20. Jacobelli-Isoldi, finds analogies between the desired unions of topica and critica, of sapientia, prudentia, eloquentia, and the universal and particular (G. B. Vico: La vita e le opere, 180). But the "essential integration" of topica and critica that she speaks of is not achieved in the De ratione, as Botturi clearly realizes. See Francesco Botturi, La sapienza della storia: Giambattista Vico e la filosofica pratica (Milan, 1991), 43-47, 68-69.
21. Milbank, The Religious Dimension, I, 302-3. On the increased interest in elocutio in Italian culture just before Vico, see Brian Vickers, "On the Practicalities of Renaissance Rhetoric," in Rhetoric Revalued (Binghamton, N.Y., 1982), 136-41, with references.
22. Milbank, The Religious Dimension, I, 302-3. On the increased interest in elocutio in Italian culture just before Vico, see Brian Vickers, "On the Practicalities of Renaissance Rhetoric," in Rhetoric Revalued (Binghamton, N.Y., 1982), 136-41, with references.
23. Milbank, The Religious Dimension, I, 296-97.
24. The idea of "dissection," as presented in De antiquissima 1.2, may have inspired Georges Sorel's conception of "diremption."
25. Certainly Vico's positioning of mathematics at the pinnacle of the human scientiae is an anti-Cartesian irony, because what mathematics gains in certainty and clarity, it loses in ontological significance.
26. But see Donald Phillip Verene, Vico's Science of Imagination (Ithaca, 1981), 40.
27. Marcello Montanari, Vico e la politica dei moderni (Bari, 1995), 63, concludes that verum-factum is not reducible to an epistemological criterion, Baconian or otherwise, but is "un principio etico-politico, non solamente gnoseologico."
28. Botturi, La sapienza della storia, 113, note 169, suggests that the promotion of solertia from a habitus to a facultas is an artifact of humanism but leaves the details obscure.
29. This conception of ingenium suggests affinities with Baroque writers, especially Tesauro. On the Baroque aspect of Vico generally, see Botturi, La sapienza della storia, 106-10, with references.
30. Cf. Michael Oakeshott, Rationalism in Politics (New York, 1962), 91-92.
31. Cf. Gadamer, Truth and Method, 317: "Aristotle's ability to describe phenomena from every aspect constitutes his real genius."
32. Bernard Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (Cambridge, Mass., 1985), 148.
33. Montanari, Vico e la politica dei moderni, 61, emphasizes that "making" for Vico is something more than technical operation. It is an "attività creativo-poietica" that does not intend to "contraporre la poesia e le scienze morali alle scienze naturali, la retorica alla logica." Rather, it subsumes the usual dualities in a conception of philosophy that embraces "la volontà di combattere quelle filosofie che vogliono ridurre la 'potenza creativa' (la fantasia, la prassi) ad un agire meccanico."
34. R. G. Collingwood, Principles of Art (Oxford, 1938), 111. Quoted in Dunne, Back to the Rough Ground, 63.
35. R. G. Collingwood, Principles of Art (Oxford, 1938), 111. Quoted in Dunne, Back to the Rough Ground, 63.
36. Compare Milbank, The Religious Dimension, I, 90, which speaks of an "immanent teleology of art." This is similar to the "expressivism" described in Collingwood, and more recently in Charles Taylor, The Ethics of Authenticity (Cambridge, Mass., 1991), 61ff.
37. Compare Milbank, The Religious Dimension, I, 90, which speaks of an "immanent teleology of art." This is similar to the "expressivism" described in Collingwood, and more recently in Charles Taylor, The Ethics of Authenticity (Cambridge, Mass., 1991), 61ff.