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From Social Theory to Philosophy: Vico’s Disillusions with the Neapolitan Magistracy and the New Frontier of Philosophy

Barbara Ann Naddeo

in Vico and Naples: The Urban Origins of Modern Social Theory

This concluding chapter elaborates on Vico's famous claim in his Autobiografia that he became a philosopher only because he failed to become a professor of law. It shows that Vico's politicking among ... More

This concluding chapter elaborates on Vico's famous claim in his Autobiografia that he became a philosopher only because he failed to become a professor of law. It shows that Vico's politicking among the judiciary was untimely—and hence a miserable failure—by narrating Vico's unsuccessful bid for the highly remunerative Morning Chair of Civil Law at the University of Naples. The chapter further recounts the great personal difficulty with which Vico drafted and sought to publish the first edition of the Scienza nuova, then ends with the first edition of the Scienza nuova, in which Vico generalized the hypotheses of his legal works to make applicable to world society those insights about the nature of citizenship and rights of humans that he heretofore more narrowly had exemplified with his history of the Roman metropolis.Less

Alternative Anthropologies: Vico and Herder

in The Scenic Imagination: Originary Thinking from Hobbes to the Present Day

Giambattista Vico (1668–1744) offers a historically unique insight into the generative relationship between the sacred, language, and human order. He argues that language is a product of mimesis, ... More

Giambattista Vico (1668–1744) offers a historically unique insight into the generative relationship between the sacred, language, and human order. He argues that language is a product of mimesis, that the first language was participatory rather than simply referential, and that the objects of this language were sacred rather than profane. For Vico, this elementary sacred, constituted by anthropomorphic explanations of natural phenomena, is a providential means for imposing order through terror on “savage” society. Vico's “new science” posits that we can only fully know (that is, analyze) what we ourselves have constructed—a principle reminiscent of the originary hypothesis. In his book La Scienza Nuova (1730–1744), Vico variously describes the first linguistic signs as gestures, graphic representations, onomatopoetic sounds, emotional interjections, and rhythmic monosyllables derived from song. In his Essay on the Origin of Language (1772), Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803) rejects Etienne de Condillac's attempt to derive human language from natural signs.Less