잠바티스타 비코(Giambattista Vico)의 반계몽주의적 종교와 신화 이해: 『새로운 학문』(Scienza Nuova)을 중심으로

Abstract

Giambattista Vico is regarded as an anti-Enlightenment thinker who sought to show the central role of religion and myth in the construction of human society and civilization. He challenged René Descartes, his central intellectual target, who constructed a model of science based on mathematical knowledge. According to the Cartesian model of science, myth is considered to be a mere fiction of primitive humankind who are less intelligent and more ignorant than modern man. Against Descartes’s model of science, he endeavored to establish the new model of science based on human memory, imagination (fantasia), which is, for him, the basis of myth and religion. He asserts that even mathematical knowledge is not objective truth, but a product of human-making (poesis). Therefore, the distinction between myth and reason is, for him, not valid, since myth embraces rational thinking. He holds that myth is an expression and interpretation of human experience of the sacred, which is the basis of religion. This means that myth is not a fictional story as Enlightenment thinkers like David Hume believed, but a way of understanding (Weltanschauung) the world of primitive men. The significance of Vico’s theory of religion and myth consists in his consideration of religion in its own terms, not from an outside point of view. His perspective prefigures the modern theory of religion such as phenomenology, hermeneutics, and sociology of religion.