Scienza Nuova Research Articles

Эстетические взгляды Джамбаттиста Вико

Vladimir Nikolaevich Maksimovski (1887–1941) — professor, Soviet party and government worker; together with A. K. Dzhivelegov, he began the local study of Machiavelli's legacy in the early 1930s. His documentary historical story about an Italian politician of the late Middle Ages “Cola di Rienzo” was published in the series “The Lives of wonderful People” in 1936 [1]. During the period of political repression in 1937, V. M. Maksimovski was arrested and died in exile. The text is a re-publication of Vladimir Maksimovski's article “The Aesthetic views of Giambattista Vico”. The article was published only once in 1935 in the journal “Literary Critic” [2]. The presented research is a somewhat shortened version of the preface to the failed edition of The New Science [3] by the famous Neapolitan thinker of the Age of Enlightenment translated by A. A. Huber. The preparation of the Russian language edition of Giambattista Vico's treatise (1668–1744) was carried out by the publishing house “Academia” of the St. Petersburg (Leningrad) Philosophical Society, which existed in 1921–1937, and was interrupted. The publishing house “Academia” ceased to exist after the arrest of the last head J. D. Janson in 1937. Only a few signal copies of the “New Science” with a preface by V. N. Maksimovski were released. At the end of the article itself there is a link to the original plans for its publication in this capacity. The changes of the activity and the huge contribution of the publishing house and the author of the unpublished preface to the study of Italian culture in the USSR of those years are described in detail in K. S. Landa's article “On the reception of Italian literature in the USSR: The preparation of an edition of Giambattista Vico’s Scienza Nuova (New Science) Giambattista Vico” [4]. K. S. Landa concludes that “the attention of the author of the article was focused primarily on Vico's ideas about language, poetics and rhetoric” [4. C. 232], while we know the legacy of J. Vico, first of all, as a theory of the cycle — the development of all nations in cycles consisting of three epochs, and his theory of the state. Subsequent articles about Vico published in the Soviet Union were much more critical: the author of “Science” was declared almost a scholastic, aesthetic views were forgotten, considering him only in the socio-political context of materialistic dialectics. This is another reason why V.N. Maksimovski's preface should be considered as an important element in the overall picture of the reception of the legacy of the Neapolitan thinker in Russia, whom he called even an earlier founder of aesthetics than I.-G. Baumgarten. Maksimovski’ reflections on the aesthetic views of J. Vico came out as a separate publication [2], and since the “New Science” was published in 1940 by another publishing house with an introductory article by M. Lifshits [5], the compilers of this issue of “Studia Culturae — Italian Studies” considered it their duty to once again introduce everyone connected with the study of Italian culture, to a part of a forgotten article by the very first editor of the edition of the treatise of Vico in Russian.

Cultural competition in the Italian Left: Mario Spinella and the beginnings of La scienza nuova book series*

ABSTRACT Between the 1960s and the 1970s, Marxism reached its maximum success in Italy, but that phase also corresponded to the crisis of the Italian Communist Party’s cultural hegemony, challenged by both the attacks coming from the New Left and innovative readings of Marx’s works. Marxist historicism, on which the Italian Communist Party had based its cultural policy after the the Second World War, consequently suffered heavy attacks. This article illuminates one of the responses to historicism’s decline, providing an account of the book series La Scienza Nuova, issued by the publishing house Dedalo in Bari and edited by the communist intellectual Mario Spinella, who was able to remain loyal to his party demonstrating, at the same time, cultural autonomy. Also grounding on archival documents, the article posits that Spinella’s aim was to attract New Left readers by selecting books on topics and by authors that were in fashion in Italy and abroad, but incorporating them into a theoretical framework based on Marxist historicism, in order to preserve the latter in an evolving cultural environment.

Aesthetics of Law as ‘Iconic Legal Theology’: Legendre, Schmitt and Vico

The article locates the aesthetics of law within modern legal knowledge, moving from the analysis of Kelsen’s and Schmitt’s theories. Schmitt’s reading of Hobbes becomes the starting point in which political theology can be understood as an iconic legal theology, since the image of Leviathan. Legendre expands the reconstruction of the legal aesthetic model to the entire second millennium, moving from the appropriation of the imperial role of the Roman Pontiff. The article reads the frontispiece of Vico’s Scienza Nuova as a possible alternative to the Hobbesian model and as the foundation of contemporary visual legal studies.

La caduta dello stato eroico. Il conflitto nella Scienza Nuova di Giambattista Vico

The aim of this essay is to analyze the figure of conflict in Giambattista Vico’s Scienza Nuova, highlighting its epistemological function and its historical-political cogency. This conflict presents itself both as an epistemological means through which reason understands the process of community establishment, and as the effective force for the development of nations. In fact, the changing of times outlined by Vico takes the form of an asymmetrical conflict which proves to be socially significant to the extent that it allows the recomposition of the social body within an order marked by the recognition, albeit precarious, of equality.

Environmental Education and Complexity

The purpose of this study is to identify and analyze meanings that the term complexity assumes in Brazilian theses and dissertations in the field of environmental education, especially when addressing socio-environmental issues. The studies were selected from the database Theses and Dissertations of EArte ( http://earte.net/ ), which is a repository for Brazilian theses and dissertations in the field of environmental education. Twenty theses and dissertations were selected to compose the documental corpus of this investigation. For the investigation, content analysis was used. Three a priori categories were defined to analyze the meanings of Complexity: (1) complex thinking: organized from Morin’s ideas of Dialogical Principle, Organizational Recursion Principle, Holographic Principle, and Scienza Nuova; (2) complex systems: organized from uncertainty, dynamics, and open systems groupings; and (3) complexification organized from the environmental complexity grouping. The complex thinking category was the most frequent in the analyses, identified in fifteen of the twenty theses and dissertations. In twelve of the twenty dissertations, the category of complex systems was identified, while in four of the twenty, the category complexification was referenced. These studies show a greater inclination towards the ideas of Edgar Morin and Enrique Leff.

Natural Law and the Chair of Ethics in the University of Naples, 1703–1769

AbstractThis articles focuses on a significant change to the curriculum in “ethics” (moral philosophy) in the University of Naples, superintended by Celestino Galiani, the rector of the university (1732–53), and Antonio Genovesi, Galiani's protégé and the university's professor of ethics (1746–54). The article contends that Galiani's and Genovesi's sympathies lay with the form of “modern natural law” pioneered by Hugo Grotius and his followers in Northern Europe. The transformation of curricular ethics in Protestant contexts had stemmed from an anxiety about its relevance in the face of moral skepticism. The article shows how this anxiety affected a Catholic context, and it responds to John Robertson's contention that Giambattista Vico's use of “sacred history” in hisScienza nuova(1725, revised 1730, 1744) typified a search among Catholics for an alternative to “scholastic natural law,” when the latter was found insufficiently to explain the sources of human sociability.

A Prophet of Divine Wisdom?—Giambattista Vico and the Construction of the Pythagorean Myth

Abstract In the nineteenth century, the reception of Giambattista Vico’s writings came along with nationalist interpretations of his Scienza Nuova as an ‘Italian Science’. This tendency was based upon an increased examination of the role that the philosopher Pythagoras and his Italian school of Croton played in Vico’s hierarchical conception of the ancient Greek and Italian civilizations. Writers, archaeologists and historians used the New Science as a metonymic reference work for their own nationalist concepts by updating the Pythagorean myth in accordance with relevant narratives of exclusive genealogies concerning an ancient Italian wisdom. These narratives follow tendencies in Vico’s own writings that were quoted strategically and mixed with further interpretations of the Scienza Nuova as reliable testimonial for a glorious Italian history. A theological poet characterized by deeper insight into the secrets of nature and some parts of the divine providence, Pythagoras gains his special position in Vico’s general conception of knowledge.

How to construct a common and consensual multicultural civic discourse

The 21st-century construction of a new Chinese political discourse faces the same dilemma that Chinese intellectuals first identified in the 19th century – how to make currently pre-eminent Eurocentric sociocultural, economic and political theory and praxis compatible with Sinocentric sociocultural, economic and political circumstances. At the same time, among Chinese thinkers and strategists, there is a growing self-confidence in China’s ability to play a pre-eminent role in a new post-Western world order. Euro-American faith in the convergence of all societies into a single economic, social and political model defined by the heritage of the European Enlightenment and by Euro-American history is challenged by the emergence of new economic powers outside the Euro-American sphere that resist this model. Eurocentric sociocultural, economic and political theory and praxis must adapt themselves to the emerging paradigms and praxis of an emerging multicultural world order. During a historical period when Afro-Eurasian connectivity was at its height and Ibn Battuta and Marco Polo traversed Eurasia, Ramon Llull (1232–1316) tried in his Ars Magna Generalis (ca. 1274) to develop a new common and consensual terminology and logic of key terms and beliefs that would facilitate mutual understanding among Christians, Jews and Muslims. Shortly thereafter, in his Muqaddimah, Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406) elaborated a universal theory of history. Giambattista Vico (1668–1744) tried something similar in Principi di Scienza Nuova d’intorno alla Comune Natura delle Nazioni. The development of new cross-cultural paradigms on a common, multicultural and consensual basis is needed, based on better knowledge of the non-Euro-American languages and cultures involved and more collaborative international and multicultural efforts to promote and build better mutual knowledge and understanding. Mutual respect requires mutual knowledge in order to construct a common and consensual multicultural civic discourse that could lead to more innovative and productive paradigms and more meaningful cooperation.

Wonder, Politics, and the Founding of Civilizations in Gravina’s Della Ragione Poetica and Vico’s Scienza Nuova

Gianvincenzo Gravina (1664–1718) and Giambattista Vico (1668–1744) were two Neapolitan philosophers concerned with the way human society initially formed. They agreed that ancient myths were produced by a mentality that had a powerful ability for acute perception but could not reflect abstractly. They also agreed that wonder (la maraviglia) was an important force that enchanted the first peoples into founding society. They disagreed on how this happened. Gravina argued that early poets could see the truth and used persuasive poetry to teach the people how to live. Vico argued that wonder impelled the first poets to create false divinities that frightened the first bestial people into founding civilization. While the two views differ, they show how Neapolitan Enlightenment thinkers developed radically different answers to questions that Northern Europeans were asking.

Towards a new philosophy of history. European Vichianism and Neapolitan Hegelianism (1804–48)

ABSTRACTThis article examines how Hegel’s reception among nineteenth-century Neapolitan authors went hand-in-hand with a renewed interest in Giambattista Vico’s philosophy of history. It considers the mechanisms of circulation and reception that shaped responses to Hegelianism within the broader context of European debates on La Scienza Nuova. These developments largely directed Neapolitans’ understanding of Hegel’s ideas and encouraged the merging of local thought with wider European currents. Neapolitan Hegelians engaged very extensively with the works of French and northern Italian authors, such as Jules Michelet and Carlo Cattaneo, who had understood Vico as a proponent of an absolute concept of historical time that neatly dovetailed with the philosophical preoccupations common among German idealists. The article makes a case for a transnational understanding of Neapolitan Hegelianism, arguing that this current of thought did not merely stem from the passive absorption of Hegel’s ideas, but emerged as the synthesis of a local and a European dimension of philosophy.

Un bosquejo del legado de Giambattista Vico en la ciencia psicológica actual.

: En este artículo se aborda el pensamiento de G. Vico principalmente en lo concerniente a la conformación de una ciencia psicológica que la dota de un corpus propio lleno de significados, cuyo principal interés son las acciones humanas, las cuales permiten comprender la vida individual y social. Para lograr esta labor primero se analiza la forma en que ha evolucionado la sociedad, con base en las ideas de Vico plasmadas en su Scienza nuova; posteriormente se examina el papel de las acciones humanas en la comprensión del pensamiento psicológico actual. Se presenta además un bosquejo del entorno intelectual y científico que se vivía en la época de Vico; se analiza también el impacto de su pensamiento en la eterna disputa que se ha mantenido en la ciencia psicológica sobre la dirección que debe seguir ésta, personificada en la encrucijada ¿explicar o comprender?

De filósofo a erósofo. (Nota de adiós al meditador sensualista).

Una nota sobre Ferdinand Fellmann, pensador recientemente fallecido (28/10/2019). El filósofo discípulo de Blumemberg, interesado por Vico desde los años setenta, ha sido colaborador de Cuadernos sobre Vico en estos últimos años.

James Joyce and the Philosophers at "Finnegans Wake" by Donald Phillip Verene

Reviewed by: James Joyce and the Philosophers at "Finnegans Wake" by Donald Phillip Verene Dieter Fuchs (bio) JAMES JOYCE AND THE PHILOSOPHERS AT "FINNEGANS WAKE," by Donald Phillip Verene. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 2016. xxi + 124 pp. $99.95 cloth, $34.95 paper. Donald Phillip Verene's James Joyce and the Philosophers at "Finnegans Wake" is an excellent book of many turns. There are too many turns, in fact, to give due credit to all the important insights presented in this study within the limited scope of a book review. The text reflects an incredible density of thought, and the reader can only try to summarize the most central aspects of a myriad of carefully interwoven insights presented in this, quantitatively speaking, rather slim booklet. The study is held together by a central cluster of thought. Although it has become commonplace schoolbook knowledge that Finnegans [End Page 185] Wake is informed by the philosophy of Giambattista Vico, Giordano Bruno, and Nicholas of Cusa, Verene rather provocatively claims that—apart from John Bishop's Joyce's Book of the Dark: "Finnegans Wake"—there is no study with an in-depth focus on the role of Vico in the Wake (xx).1 As pointed out by Verene, the Joycean schoolbook knowledge about Vico is limited to the notion that history follows a repetitive or cyclical pattern known as corso and ricorso and that this pattern is informed by the duplicity of the Brunonian concept of the coincidence of opposites. Or, as Verene puts it, "Vico's philosophy of history is a wake in which the nations in their corso and ricorso seem to be dead, and rise again—all at the direction of providence that rules the great city in which they cycle" (15). It is mainly because of this cyclicality beyond life and death that Viconian philosophy has been considered a source of inspiration for Finnegans Wake. James Joyce and the Philosophers at "Finnegans Wake," however, proves that this aspect is only a very early clue to a carefully interwoven network of multiple undiscovered philosophical allusions. This is the research gap to be filled by Verene's book. Reading Vico, Bruno, Nicholas of Cusa, and the Wake side-by-side, Verene convinces the reader that Vico's Pricipj di Scienza Nuova D'Intorno Alla Comune Delle Nazioni and his autobiographical Vita di Giambattista Vico do not only function as sources of manifold intertextual reference.2 Rather than that, the system of thought presented in these works functions as, borrowing from Anthony Burgess, a structural "scaffolding, a backbone" or skeleton of Finnegans Wake—very much like Homer's Odyssey does for Joyce's Ulysses (xi).3 This insight constitutes nothing less than the (unmentioned) claim that Joyce's "mythical method"—as defined by T. S. Eliot with regard to Ulysses—constitutes an important and undiscovered dimension of Finnegans Wake as well.4 Although one may at first be hesitant to approach the Wake in structuralist terms of plot- and character-centered analogy and correspondence, Verene's careful close reading offers convincing insights to prove his research hypothesis. In this way, the reader learns that, no matter how radically different the Wake may be compared to Joyce's earlier works, this text can be also approached as a documentation of Joyce's lifelong artistic continuity—as an evolutionary, rather than revolutionary, way of "making it new." Seen from this vantage point, Finnegans Wake holds an organic place within Joyce's oeuvre as an organon-like Gesamtkunstwerk. Just as Vico's Scienza Nuova claims that knowledge can be best achieved if one blends philosophical and philological approaches,5 Verene fuses his study of Joyce's philosophical encounter with Vico with the philological analysis of Joyce's intertextual dialogue with Dante's Divina Commedia.6 Taking Samuel Beckett's landmark essay "Dante… Bruno. Vico . . Joyce" as a starting point, this intertextual analysis shows that the Divina Commedia reinforces the structural scaffold [End Page 186] provided by the Scienza Nova.7 It is well known that Ulysses derives structure from an intertextual dialogue with Homer's Odyssey, and similarly Finnegans Wake profits from the structural design of the Divina Commedia written by Dante Alighieri, whom...

La revolución científica moderna y su impacto en el pensamiento político-jurídico alemán del siglo xvii. Johanes Althusius (1563-1638) y Samuel Pufendorf (1634-1694)

The modern scientific revolution, as formulated in the works of Copernicus, Galileo, Newton and Leibniz, provided the foundations of a new empirical-rationalist paradigm based on mathematics. Our main goal is to demonstrate how this epistemology-methodology was also adopted within German political and legal thought of the 17th century. For this purpose we concentrate on the legal and political theories of Althusius and Pufendorf, whose works stand at the beginning and end of the scientific revolution in the field of Political Science and Modern Law in Germany. Analyzing the complex academic and scientific German context from 17thcentury we conclude that Althusius and Pufendorf took part in the scientific revolution using the methodological-epistemic grounds of the scienza nuova, but without renouncing the Aristotelian model of Politica.

Giambattista Vico, aphorism, and aphoristic machines

ABSTRACTIn order to think the simultaneously idealist and realist qualities of the thought of Giambattista Vico, this article considers the axioms of Book I of the Scienza nuova (1730) in the context of literatures on aphorism. It surveys the motley array of eclectic axioms that Vico collects in the first book of his masterpiece, and runs some of those scripts conceptually in order to see them as both found-object stand-ins for realism and as exempla-turned-rules that begin the poetic-logical work of ideation. The essay affirms that aphorisms are phenomena that are essentially collectible and collected. The author of this essay thus articulates five principles of the aphoristic machines produced in the course of such collecting. The essay concludes with the hypothesis that the ideated incompleteness of the aphorism and the cornucopia of inferential potentials that is characteristic of the collection of aphorisms combine to enable us to think realism and idealism together as copious particularity and case-into-rule extrapolations.

Vico's New Science of the Intersubjective World by Vittorio Hösle

Reviewed by: Vico's New Science of the Intersubjective World by Vittorio Hösle Antonio Cercena Vittorio Hösle, Vico's New Science of the Intersubjective World, trans. Francis R. Hittinger IV ( Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press 2016) xvi + 226 pp. I found Francis R. Hittinger's translation of Vittorio Hösle's Vico's New Science of the Intersubjective World, approachable and informative, and very helpful as an introduction to the original work of Vico Giambattista. Hösle's work aims to give a fundamental preparation for a "precise study of the Scienza nuova" (4), providing the reader with "the necessary categories and context, and to familiarize him or her with the most important moments in the critical debate on Vico" (4). It is the purpose of this review to determine whether the goal of the author was fully achieved. Hittinger's translation makes accessible Hösle's brilliant elucidation of Vico's Scienza Nuova to the graduate level philosopher, theologian, or historian of philosophy. The translation is presented in fluid and vivid English which is effective in communicating the important ideas of Hösle's research on Vico. This translated work will no doubt effectively assist the serious researcher of Vichian philosophy. Vittorio Hösle breaks down, in true scholarly fashion, many aspects of Vico's philosophy by guiding the reader through an introductory background of his personal biography; along with the formal, methodological and material aspects found in the Scienza Nuova. The introduction to Vico's life and the [End Page 212] following three categories provide ample information about Vico and details of the value, innovation and questions of the Scienza Nuova. His layout is both effective and precise, whether introducing Vico's notion of historical development and divine providence, or presenting his insights on topics such as language, art, jurisprudence, and political theory, to name just a few. The development of peoples is a concept that Vico treats in his Scienza Nuova. His position showed adventurous originality and "outside the box" thinking, as Hösle shows him to have been particularly innovative. Nations rise and fall and different forms of governance are changed and developed. This was understood before and during Vico's time, notably by Machiavelli. However, Vico had developed a fascinating thought: that it wasn't simply nations or governments that changed, but also the "people acting in history is subject to change" (70). In other words, he understood that historical events occurred exteriorly to human beings, e.g. human nature. Vico was experimenting with the idea that human nature changes with the flux of historical events, which would be contrary to the traditional view of human nature never being subject to change in itself, especially by external historical events. His stance was that with the change of exterior historical events there was also an internal fluctuation in human nature, to include emotions. This is reminiscent of an early attempt at a sociological conclusion, where a study of society occurs in relation to certain events or occurrences that have happened, e.g. war. Vico claims that the archaic man's "notion of justice, conception of beauty, and view of God are completely unlike" (70) the man of the present time. This is an early subjectivist position on human nature. Vico's position allows him to conclude that "archaic man is not actually capable for logical reasons, of understanding the equality of all men" (72). Vico understands that a state run by the rule of law can exist only in late history. Thus he concludes that the modern state (eighteenth-century) extends beyond the pre-logical thought of the archaic man and arrives at modern rationality. Another example in the Scienza Nuova that shows Vico's philosophical originality is his perspectives on spoken language and its importance. He sees that "the unity of the human being is rooted in language: language carries the expression of heart and mind" (102). Alluding to this Vichian idea, Hösle continues to point out that Vico's interest in language "is rooted in his objective of reconstructing the archaic world" (102). Vico's interest in language, although original and novel, is restricted by his times. H...

Literature in the University: Giambattista Vico’s Ideal Type

This article re-evaluates the place of literature within Giambattista Vico’s ideas about education. It examines his orations De mente heroica (1732) and De nostri temporis studiorum ratione (1709) alongside the Scienza nuova (1744) and Vico’s 1729 letter to Francesco Saverio Estevan, connecting his concept of imaginative universals to his ideas about literary characters. It shows how by problematizing the idea of literary truth and representation, Vico emphasizes fiction’s cognitive and ethical potential. For Vico, literature provides a unique opportunity for both self-knowledge and the study of human society. Because of the link between poetry and common sense, fiction becomes the means that can make it possible to bridge the gap between the particular and the universal. Vico’s notion of realism and his conception of literary characters as ideal types grant fiction the unique power to reshape reality and not merely to represent it.

Mikhail Lifshits and the Soviet image of Giambattista Vico

Mikhail Lifshits’ interpretation of the scholarly work of the Italian philosopher Giambattista Vico is analysed against the background of other Soviet interpretations. M. Lifshits authored the introductory article for the first complete translation of Vico’s Scienza Nuova in 1940. In the second half of the 1930s, interest in Vico’s ‘historical theory of knowledge’ was important for the struggle against so-called ‘vulgar sociology’ in the field of aesthetics and literary criticism. Besides this, Vico’s theory of the ‘historical cycle’ was close to the interests M. Lifshits and G. Lukacs and their circle in Stalin-era Moscow. This interest was connected with discussions about the preservation of the revolutionary impulse under the conditions of state socialism. However, such an interpretation of Vico (considering him only as a predecessor of Hegel’s and Marx’s philosophy of history) restricted a wide spectrum of his scholarly work. In particular, Lifshits, as an opponent of social-constructivism tradition, ignored Vico’s well-known doctrine of verum factum.

A New Field:History of Humanities

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Giambattista Vico and the Aesthetic Education of the Modern Reader of Philosophy: Geometry, Ingenuity, and Imagination

In La filosofia di Giambattista Vico, Benedetto Croce famously stated that the founding text of modern aesthetics is not Kant’s Critique of Judgment but Giambattista Vico’s Scienza nuova, a text that, Croce said, contains the entire nineteenth century in germe. Yet, Croce maintained that the obscurity of Vico’s style and the convoluted structure of his argument spoiled the potential revolutionary effect that the Scienza nuova could have had on the history of mainstream philosophy. In this paper, I argue that the obscurity of Vico’s writing is rooted in a general project of reformation of the modern reader of philosophy. Vico develops an ideal trajectory of an aesthetic education of his reader through a web of self-reflexive metaphors that underscore his writings from the early works to the final edition of the Scienza nuova in 1744. I focus on the metaphors used by Vico to describe the relationship of the reader’s subjectivity with geometry on one hand and with poetic ingenuity on the other. I analyze how these metaphors work as screens for the development of a new aesthetic identity of the modern subject of philosophy.