VICO AND MARX.

ONE HUNDRED YEARS AFTER MARX'S DEATH*

1

Today 's flourishing Vico scholarship is bringing to light the

countless implications of Vico's thought for contemporary

humanities† and the actual and potential contribution of Vico to

them and influence on them. As a consequence: (a) today's Vico

scholarship is, in a sense, paralleling, and in competition with, the

widespread, direct or indirect, explicit or implicit presence of

Marxian ideas in this area; (b) this state of affairs has generated a

new, fundamental problem for scholars concerned with, or directly

or indirectly influenced by, Vico a n d / o r Marx. I am alluding to the

problem of the actual and potential comparative standing and

influence — and of the possible coexistence or blending — in

contemporary scholarship, of some basic ideas of Vico and of

Marx. So far scholars have not focused their attention on the

existence of this problem or on its importance. The 100th

anniversary, in 1983, of the death of Marx, by inviting a reassess-

ment of his overall current and prospective standing and influence,

is an appropriate moment for beginning the study of the newly

emerged problem. In this paper, as a prolegomenon, I shall sketch

the origin of the problem, its background, some features of

contemporary humanistic thought which have a bearing on it, and

a few tentative conclusions.

2

Concerning the origin of the p r o b l e m ' there is no need here

to dwell on what I have called " today ' s flourishing Vico

scholarship ," or on the above-mentioned fact that such scholarship

is bringing to light " t h e countless implications of Vico's thought

for contemporary humanities and the actual and potential contri-

bution of Vico to them and influence on t h e m . " It is only

necessary here to underline two basic factors that explain the

*This paper was presented to the Department of Philosophy at Emory

University on 21 April, 1983.

†The terms "humanit ies ,"humanist ic , ' ' and similar ones, are used

here to indicate all fields of the humanities and humanistic aspects of the

social sciences.

98

99

contemporary wide and increasing interest in Vico's thought . These

are: (a) the discredit of the Cartesian-positivistic approach to

knowledge; (b) the recent emergence in many humanistic fields of

topics, theories and viewpoints which are analogous, mutatis mutandis,

to those which occupied Vico's mind. Among these topics, theories

and viewpoints are myth analysis, Homeric studies, linguistics,

rhetoric, hermeneutics, semiotics, literary criticism, certain trends

in philosophy, structuralism, some aspects of Western Marxism,

genetic psychology, anthropology, sociology, religion. I shall touch

on the discredit of the Cartesian-positivistic approach to knowledge

later (4, 1). However, the second of the two basic factors

explaining the current increasing interest in Vico requires

immediate clarification. As I pointed out in my remarks

inaugurating the Vico and Contemporary Thought conference

in 1976, 1 al though there are obvious parallels between certain ideas

of Vico and those worked out in several disciplines of our day, it

is misleading to think of Vico in such instances as a forerunner, as

though his achievement was to have expressed in protoform ideas

that acquired full stature in a later day. For what in later thinkers

are independent or semi-independent products of a scholarly

specialty, in Vico are corollaries of a unique, seamless

philosophical structure: corollaries comparable to the branches and

sub-branches of a "Tree of Knowledge" portraying the human

mind in all its interrelated aspects and conquests . 2 The root of this

"Tree of Knowledge" is the verum-factum principle, according to

which men can only know that which they themselves have made

or are in principle capable of making. This principle is thus

formulated in Vico's New Science (par. 331):

But in the night of thick darkness enveloping the earliest antiquity,

so remote from ourselves, there shines the eternal and never failing

light of truth beyond all question: that the world of civil society has

certainly been made by men and its principles are therefore to be

found within the modifications of our human mind.

I want to dwell a moment on what I have called Vico's

"seamless philosophical s t ruc ture" or "Tree of Knowledge." Vico

begins by asserting the value of the imagination (fantasia).3 The

multiple activities which imagination generates are not taken to be

secondary or protoforms of the rational. On Vico's terms, the

mind can be understood in all its complexity and can be seen as the

basis for a truly genetic understanding of the human world. Vico

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accounts for the unity of knowledge and culture because he returns

to the origins of the human world and finds in its original status

the principles that unify the mind and its life. There are, of course,

a host of modern thinkers concerned with understanding mind,

society and culture in such categories as wholeness and develop-

ment, and to this extent they share Vico's perspective. One cannot

read the works of such figures as Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Husserl,

Cassirer, Piaget, Lévi-Strauss, Heidegger or Habermas without

noticing how many ideas forged in response to contemporary

problems in various fields of inquiry have affinities with those

formulated by Vico in his New Science. Almost instinctively one

thinks of the ideas of such men as extensions or amplifications of

the many branches of Vico's "Tree of Knowlege." (See below p.

110 and n. 33). However, the same image makes clear that the time

has passed of praising Vico as merely a great precursor. The time

has come to begin considering him as a pioneer of things to come:

as a pioneer of a bold and still viable, if not fully developed,

integrating vision of man and culture. Such a vision is much

needed and yearned for in our time. This is why Vico's thought is

so important today. This is the origin of the 'problem' we are here

discussing.

3

A few background remarks concerning the Vico/Marx

relationship are in order.

First. My selection of Vico as the particular philosopher to be

compared with Marx for the purposes indicated above is not a

choice among various possible ones. It is, instead, the only

available and significant selection. This happens to be so because

Vico and Marx are the only two thinkers whose basic ideas

(fundamentally, Vico's verum-factum principle and what has been

described as Marx's postulate of 'historical materialism') branch

out into all (or, in Marx's case, most of) the fields of

contemporary humanistic thought. By this image I do not mean to

imply that Vico's and Marx's basic ideas 'branch out' in the same

way: far from it. In Vico, as explained a moment ago, such

'branching out' actually or potentially occurs through corollaries

of a complete philosophy grounded on the verum-factum, which

portrays the human mind in all its aspects and is capable of

founding any contemporary humanistic discipline. (Actually,

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Vico's philosophy even encompasses several topics — e.g.,

language and myth — that many outstanding philosophers have

ignored). In Marx, on the contrary, the 'branching out' occurs

through the series of shallow inferences by his followers in the

form of a Marxist Weltanschauung based on an arbitrary,4

ideological5

point of departure: the 'historical materialism'

postulate. Such being the case, the Marxist 'branching out' is not

as unlimitedly rich and varied as the Vichian one. In other words,

it is only capable of 'originating' (in its own way) a limited number

of 'varieties' of traditional disciplines. In particular, Marx is silent

on a number of topics which are vital for both Vico and

contemporary thought.6

But, in spite of these differences, Marx

has only one rival with whom a meaningful comparison, from the

viewpoint indicated, can be established: Vico; and Vico, in turn,

from the same viewpoint, has only one rival: Marx.

Second. No organic presentation of the thought of Marx,

systematically encompassing the entire range of the humanistic

disciplines, to my knowledge, has so far been attempted. This is

due not only to what has just been said about the 'branching out'

of Marx's basic ideas, but also to the uniqueness of Marx's

thought. Owing to its unconventional postulates, presentation and

subject-matter, as compared to those of traditional philosophical

treatises, Marx's thought has so far enjoyed a kind of 'splendid

isolation,' i.e. there were no competitors in the light of which it

could be assessed, except perhaps Hegel. It must be remembered

that until recently Vico — the thinker here considered his rival —

was insufficiently known even to most leading scholars and,

furthermore, that the old interpretations of Vico's thought

prevented his attaining the status of a competitor of Marx.

Third. The Vico/Marx comparison advocated in this paper is

strongly encouraged by the existence of affinities — as well as,

obviously, of contrasts — between the thought of Vico and that of

Marx. In fact, Vico's and Marx's philosophical ideas have a

common point of departure, even though, as mentioned before, it

is done in different speculative ways. They share in the negation of

traditional metaphysics. Vico begins with a negation of the

metaphysics that deduces reality from a first truth, according to

the scheme of Cartesianism. Marx begins with a negation of

Hegelian speculative idealism, which dialectically deduces reality

and historicity a priori. (Heidegger also negates traditional

metaphysics. He refutes the preeminence of the problem of the true

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as the essence of Western metaphysical thought, arriving at the

radical thesis of the end of that tradition).7

Furthermore, Vico's

and Marx's philosophical ideas have a comparable general setting,

represented by the synthesis of philosophy and philology in Vico

and the synthesis of theory and practice in Marx. They also have

an analogous dominant focus on man in his concrete historical

situation and — apart from the important differences mentioned

above — a similar encyclopaedic horizon. In addition, the two

philosophers deal with a number of analogous issues and reach

several analogous conclusions. Both Vico and Marx consider

human nature as changeable in the course of history, while

maintaining that this does not obviate the need for the search and

discovery of the law regulating change. Both hold that this law is

dictated by the efforts of men to satisfy their needs. Vico,

however, unlike Marx, does not postulate an independent material

basis that determines human action. According to Vico all features

of human existence are codeterminative: he speaks of "human

necessities and utilities of social life" (New Science, par 347).8

From Vico's remarkably modern anthropological analysis of the

labors of Hercules it is evident that Vico sees human labor as the

foundation of the transformation of nature in such a way that it

becomes the means by which man, learning the meaning of change

and time, both creates and understands history. Moreover, Vico

offers a more sensible explanation for myth and religion than Marx

does. According to Vico the imagination that gives birth to myth

and religion does not have merely a playful or aesthetic, arbitrary

or mystifying function, as it does for those who dismiss myth and

religion as "opiates of the people." For Vico the imagination is,

rather, the means by which man, by establishing unforeseeable

links among things through his analogical activity, modifies his

relationship with nature so that he is able to overcome the purely

biological factors (nutrition and survival of the species) which he

has in common with animals. According to Vico, the imagination

is endowed with a primary and existential function, and is not to

be considered first and foremost as the source of Utopian fables

and dreams denounced by the young Marx. Many more analogies,

as well as contrasts, between Vico and Marx could be listed.9

Among the many contrasts, perhaps the fundamental one is this:

Vico's concept of the cyclical structure of time — unlike Marx's

view of history as having a final goal, communism — prevents him

from being a revolutionary author. If Marx is forceful in arguing

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for the 'necessary' achievement of his Utopian goal, Vico is

nevertheless persuasive in his outline of the ideal eternal history of

human society. Vico is persuasive because his emphasis on the

imagination allows him to make a sounder evaluation of myth and

religion, which is essential if one wishes to understand the origins

of mankind and thus erect the human sciences on a solid ground.

Fourth. The importance of the study advocated in this paper is

enhanced by these factors: (a) Marx is one (the first chronologically,

and perhaps the most hegemonic) of the six modern thinkers who

have influenced contemporary humanistic thought most. (The

others whom I have in mind are Nietzsche, Saussure, Freud,

Wittgenstein, and Heidegger); (b) Marx has some ideas in common

with those thinkers (e.g. the conviction that surface events and

phenomena are to be explained by structures, data and phenomena

below the surface; that the explicit and the obvious is to be

explained by what is implicit and not obvious; that understanding

human action and ideas requires an analysis of their social context;

that human knowledge of the world emerges out of an interaction

of the social subject and the object; etc);1 0

(c) the Vico/Marx

comparison — since much of what has just been said about Marx

can be repeated, mutatis mutandis, about Vico1 1

— also implies

references to Vico as compared to the other modern thinkers

mentioned above.

4

I turn now to a brief discussion of some features of con-

temporary humanistic thought that have a bearing on the

Vico/Marx 'problem.'

1. One of these features is anti-Cartesianism — the already

mentioned widespread discredit of the Cartesian-positivistic

approach to knowledge. The influence of Descartes, which has

dominated most of Western thought for the past three centuries, is

currently undergoing heavy criticism from many quarters. It is

becoming increasingly obvious that traditional epistemological

pursuits — those that have come to us from Descartes and Locke,

from logical positivism, scientific empiricism, and much of

linguistic analysis — are simply unable to satisfy the great concern

of the late twentieth century for the understanding of the

imagination, the will, creativity, feeling, the sensuous, the

aesthetic, and the ways in which these fit man's nature and

104

constitute important aspects of the cultural world. Anthony

Giddens, the noted Cambridge sociologist, speaks of what he calls

" t h e erosion in the twentieth century of faith in scientific

knowledge as exemplar of all knowledge," and points out that " in

recent decades ... the influence of logical positivism has been

challenged with mounting success ." 1 2 In relation to this, it is

significant that Vico was one of the greatest critics of Descartes. 1 3

And it is even more significant that Vico was not content with

mere criticism. Inspired by his rich Renaissance background, Vico

devised a full-fledged alternative course to Cartesianism: a system

of thought , based on the verum-factum principle, which has a

great relevance in our time.

I quote Stephen Toulmin, the eminent philosopher of science,

for a view of the relationship between Vico's thought and modern

ideas:

Many of the arguments by which Vico himself vainly tried to hold

back the tide of Cartesianism have been integrated into twentieth-

century thought .... Perhaps the idea of timeless eternal standards,

applicable to arguments-in-general in abstraction from their practical

context, was always (as Vico claims) a Cartesian delusion. Over

reliance on the model of Euclidean geometry has led philosophy into

dead ends before now; since mathematicians have reappraised the

status of their knowledge, philosophers should reconsider their own

standards of certainty.1 4

Marx, unlike Vico, does not openly criticize the Cartesian

view. As Giddens observes, " in so far as there were strong

positivistic strains in Marx 's writings ... Marx can be categorized

along with Comte as previsaging, and seeking to bring into being,

a science of society which would reproduce, in the study of human

social life, the same kind of sensational illumination and

explanatory power already yielded by the science of nature. By this

token (Marx's) social science must surely be reckoned a failure. " l 5

(Giddens' emphasis).

2. A second feature of contemporary humanistic thought is

the already mentioned widespread direct or indirect, explicit or

implicit presence of Marx's thought in it. By "presence of Marx 's

t hough t " I am not referring to the facts that , e.g., "new books on

Marx appear almost every w e e k , " 1 6 or that " in the last five years

105

more than fifty books have been published on aspects of Marx 's

philosophical t h o u g h t , " 1 7 or that " there are over 400 courses given

today in Marxist philosophy, whereas hardly any were given in the

1960s ." 1 8 I am using the expression "presence of Marx 's t hough t "

in a far more profound way, to indicate that a number of Marx 's

philosophical insights are found in the background of most of

today 's leading scholars in the humanities: i.e. the structuralists

and post-structuralists, the "critical theoris ts" of the Frankfurt

School, and many unaffiliated prominent thinkers. It must be

immediately added, however, that , almost invariably, these

thinkers explicitly or implicitly indicate that , while accepting

(generally with qualifications) certain Marxian ideas, they disregard

or reject the rest. Lévi-Strauss has referred to Marx as one of his

" three mis t resses ." 1 9 (The other two mistresses were Freud and

geology). Michel Foucault , a leading post-structuralist who has

kept his distance from Marx and Marxism, nevertheless has

written:

It is impossible at the present time to write history without using a

whole range of concepts directly or indirectly linked to Marx's

thought and situating oneself within a horizon of thought which has

been defined and described by Marx. 2 0

Leo Lowenthal , an early member of the Frankfurt School, has

similarly affirmed:

I would say that critical theory is a progressive form of Marxism that

no longer accepts Marxist categories in changed historical situations.

The theory of immiseration, the unmediated reduction of the super-

structure to the base, the theory of the crash as the theory of the fall

in the rate of profit have all turned out to be untenable. But basic

Marxist themes have never been abandoned. 2 1

Anthony Giddens, an unaffiliated sociologist, has stated:

The Marxian vision is ambiguous .... [However], those versions of

Marx which regard Marxism, not as a natural science of society which

happens to predict the demise of capitalism and its replacement by

socialism, but as an informed investigation into the historical con-

nections of subjectivity and objectivity in human existence ... can be

reconciled with some of my own views.2 2

106

In a later work, the same Giddens has forcefully added:

If by 'historical materialism' we mean the conception that the history

of the world can be understood in terms of the progressive augmen-

tation of the forces of production, then it is based on a false premise,

and the time has come finally to abandon it. If 'historical materialism'

means that 'the history of all hitherto existing society is the history

of class struggles,' it is so patently erroneous that it is difficult to see

why so many have felt obliged to take it seriously. If, finally,

'historical materialism' means that Marx's scheme of the evolution

of societies (from tribal society, Ancient society, feudalism, to

capitalism ...) provides a defensible basis for analysing world history,

then it is also to be rejected. Only if 'historical materialism' is

regarded as embodying the more abstract elements of a theory of

human Praxis, snippets of which can be gleaned from the diversity

of Marx's writings, does it remain an indispensable contribution to

social theory today. 2 3

The above are, it seems to me, representative examples of the

fundamental atti tude of many of today 's most important thinkers

in the humanities toward the ideas of Marx. If we now reflect upon

the overall gamut of acceptances and rejections of Marx 's ideas

encountered in the above quotat ions, we shall be able to make

important inferences concerning the prevalent nature and extent of

the 'presence of Marx ' in the thought of most of today 's key

thinkers in the humanities.

To begin with, it may be noticed that , even allowing for

notable differences among them, those scholars, all admittedly

somehow influenced by Marx, can be considered 'humanist

Marxists . ' It is very important for us here to specify the meaning

of 'humanist Marxism' and to recognize the great diversity which

exists between 'humanist Marxism' and 'scientific,' 'positivist, ' or

'objectivist' Marxism. As Marx Wartofsky puts it,

['humanist Marxism'] attributes to the 'young Marx' of the Economic-

Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 (in which the alienation theory was

first developed) a humanist, cultural-philosophical character with

strong emphases on ethical or normative concepts like freedom,

human essence (or "species-being"), self-realization, and community ....

['Scientific Marxism,' on the contrary,] sees the early work as 'pre-

Marxist,' 'Feuerbachian,' and takes Marx to have become truly

'Marxist' only in the later 'scientific' works, notably, in Capital.

107

Wartofsky also notes that

['humanist Marxists' take 'scientific Marxism'] as that view that

reduces Marxism to an account of deterministic laws of history and

economic development, in which all subjective factors — conscious-

ness, culture, ideological and theoretical modes of activity — are

reduced to passive 'reflections,' without due respect for their historical

efficacy .... Against this emphasis, the critics of 'humanist Marxism'

charge the humanists with dissolving central notions of Marxism like

'class struggle,' 'laws of history,' and 'science of society' into soft-

focus sociologized or subjectivist-individualist notions of class and

culture, or of political economy.2 4

What emerges from these quotations is that the 'humanist

Marxists' and the 'scientific Marxists' accept different slices of the

Marxian pie, while practically rejecting or disregarding the rest.

We are not concerned, in this paper, with the 'scientific Marxists'

or with the uncommitted Marx exegetes, but only with the

'humanist Marxists.' Concerning the 'humanist Marxists' —

among whom, as explained above, many of the key scholars in

contemporary humanistic thought can be included — what is

important for us to underline is: (a) that the few slices of the

Marxian pie accepted by them are of the 'humanistic' kind; (b) that,

in most cases, even those 'humanistic' slices are not accepted as

such, but with qualifications. In view of this, it is easy to under-

stand Giddens' already quoted statement:

Only if 'historical materialism' is regarded as embodying the more

abstract elements of a theory of human Praxis, snippets of which can

be gleaned from the diversity of Marx's writings, does it remain an

indispensable contribution to social theory today.

Perhaps in making this statement Giddens had in mind the

"snippets gleaned from the diversity of Marx's writings" by

Habermas.2 5

Anyhow, the statement easily applies to the German

thinker. Habermas, being a member — actually, today's leading

representative — of the Frankfurt School, can be easily considered

a 'humanist Marxist' in the sense indicated above. While

considering him a 'humanist Marxist,' however, one must not

forget: (a) that Habermas has shown a notable appreciation for the

thought of Vico — to which he refers in his books, Theory and

Practice and Knowledge and Human Interest — even though he

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has also explicitly gone beyond some of his early use of Vico's

ideas2 6

; (b) that Vico was "one of the earliest intellectual heroes of

Max Horkheimer, the founder of the Frankfurt School;2 7

(c) that

"there is good reason for believing that the principals of the

Frankfurt School all knew and admired Vico's New Science."2 8

In

other words, what has just been said seems to indicate that the

'humanist Marxism' of the Frankfurt School2 9

— and, by broad

implication, 'humanist Marxism' in general — has a definite

propensity to agree with some Vichian tenets. This is easily

understandable, if one recalls that, as mentioned above, important

affinities exist between the thought of Vico and that of Marx.

However, it is possible to go beyond this inference. Let us pay

attention to these facts: (a) 'humanist Marxism' only accepts some

of Marx's ideas; (b) those ideas are only accepted by 'humanist

Marxism' mutatis mutandis, i.e. stripped of much of their Marxian'

premises and jargon; (c) the Marxian ideas thus accepted by the

'humanist Marxists' are prevalently or exclusively among those

which have a clear affinity with Vichian ideas. If we keep in mind

these facts, we can conclude that, knowingly or (more often)

unknowingly, the 'humanist Marxists' are, probably, as close, or

closer, to the thought of Vico than they are to the 'humanistic'

aspects of the thought of Marx. The 'humanist Marxists' are also,

probably, closer to Vico than to Marx, because — as mentioned

above (3, first remark, and footnote 6) — Vico addresses a number

of contemporary issues on which Marx is silent. Perhaps the most

notable of these is language, which many contemporary Marxists

from Gramsci on have found central.

3. A third feature of contemporary humanistic thought is the

hermeneutic movement in philosophy and criticism. Within the

compass of hermeneutics one can distinguish these main strands:

hermeneutics as the theory and method of textual interpretation

(Betti); philosophical hermeneutics or philosophy of culture

(Heidegger, Gadamer); and 'new hermeneutics,' in which a fusion

has taken place between elements of phenomenology, philosophy

of language, psychoanalysis and the critical theory of the

Frankfurt School (Apel, Habermas, Ricoeur). Because of its nature

and range, contemporary hermeneutics presents marked analogies

with the thought of Vico. Joseph Bleicher, author of a recent book

on hermeneutics, states that, "owing to the verum-factum principle

— which lies at the root of his view that man can understand

history because he made it himself — Vico could be considered the

109

father of 'historical hermeneut ics . '"3 0

Another scholar, James

Schwearingen, has drawn a parallel between a fundamental aspect

of Gadamer's and Heidegger's hermeneutics, on the one hand, and

Vico's, on the other, in these terms:

In the thought of Hans-Georg Gadamer and Martin Heidegger, the

concepts of common sense and tradition are renewed as universal,

although forgotten, features of all acts of interpretation and thus of

the always unfinished growth of understanding .... (Vico) gave

articulation to the ancient humanistic and rhetorical theme in terms

of will: 'what gives the human will its direction is not the abstract

generality of reason, but the concrete generality that represents the

community of a group, a nation, or the whole human race.'31

Thomas Seebohm concludes his extensive and important

survey of "The Problem of Hermeneutics in Recent Anglo-

American Literature" with a discussion of "some hints for a

systematic connection of hermeneutics and rhetoric." In this he

refers importantly to Vico. Seebohm states:

This union of philology [Seebohm refers here to hermeneutics] and

rhetoric offers more than philosophy can offer. Philology knows

more than philosophy since it is the wisdom which has its sources not

only in the tradition of philosophy, but which also knows myths, all

the sciences, and arts and poetry. On the other side the rhetorician-

philologist knows how to apply his wisdom, i.e. he is able to act — to

do that which the philosopher who studies the universal and not the

concrete situation is usually not able to do. Vico's attack against

Cartesianism is nothing but a repetition of this old struggle between

the rhetorician-philologist and philosophy. It is not without irony

that the demand for a new unity of interpretation and application in

the twentieth century has its strongest advocates in philosophy itself.

The rhetorical-philological syndrome, which disappeared more and

more under the pressure of the Cartesian methodologism on the

philological-historical method, has its renaissance in philosophy.32

These views are, obviously, quite significant. However, they

do not go far enough. Vico's hermeneutics, unlike those of

Dilthey, Heidegger, Gadamer or Habermas, directs attention to the

role of critical interpretation in understanding not only the

humanities but also the natural sciences. Furthermore, Vico's

hermeneutics considers both the humanities and the natural

110

sciences as constructions of the human mind. In this sense, Vico's

hermeneutics, unlike the ones developed by the four thinkers

mentioned above, is not just " m o d e r n " but — to use a term dear

to Stephen Toulmin — "pos t -mode rn . " I am aware that this view

differs from the prevalent consideration of Vico as the progenitor

of Dilthey's distinction between Natur and Geist, between scientific

explanation and hermeneutic interpretation. However, such a view

— which was, in a sense, implicit in the Vichian "Tree of

Knowledge" devised by this writer in 1959 — 3 3 appears to be

supported by authoritative opinions recently expressed by Stephen

Toulmin 3 4 and by Eugenio Garin. In an article entitled " T h e

Construal of Reality: Criticism in Modern and Postmodern

Science" Toulmin states:

The hermeneutic movement in philosophy and criticism has done us

a service by directing attention to the role of critical interpretation in

understanding the humanities. But it has done us a disservice also

because it does not recognize any comparable role for the interpreta-

tion in the natural sciences and in this way sharply separates the two

fields of scholarship and experience .... The general categories of

hermeneutics can be applied as well to the natural sciences as to the

humanities .... The natural sciences too are in the business of

'construing reality'. 3 5

In his recent essay entitled "Vico and the Heritage of

Renaissance T h o u g h t , " 3 6 Garin states that "[Vico traced] with

incomparable penetration the first elements of an encyclopaedia of

the sciences of man, recapturing at the same time, in a most novel

perspective, the whole encyclopaedia of knowledge." In the same

essay, Garin also speaks of Vico's "phi losophy of man as access to

the world of n a t u r e ; " of Vico's conception that " the way into the

world of nature lies through the human wor ld" ; of the " p r o c e s s "

having been discovered by Vico " th rough which man ' s entire

world develops and is structured — the civil world, civil life and its

patr imony: language, beliefs, customs, conceptions of reality,

physics included"; and, even more importantly, of Vico's view that

" t h e great systems of the world ... [are] constructions of man, or

rather of human imagina t ion . " 3 7

4. A fourth feature discernible in contemporary humanistic

thought is the still infant but impressively growing presence of

Vico's thought. There are many explanations of why the presence

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of Vico's thought is still in the infant s tage. 3 8 In this paper it is

sufficient to mention the following ones:

(a) a widespread interest in Vico was not possible in the

English-speaking world as long as no English translation of Vico's

New Science existed. The first translation appeared as recently as

1948;

(b) a number of important works by Vico are still untranslated

(e.g. Il diritto universale [Universal Law]);

(c) apart from a few pioneer studies on Vico which appeared

in the 1960s (but remained practically unnoticed for some t ime) , 3 9 a

perceptible revival of Vico scholarship only began approximately

fifteen years ago, prompted by the 1968 tricentennial anniversary

of the birth of Vico; 4 0

(d) very few thinkers of the present generation have been

exposed to the study of Vico during their school years, or have

acquired a working familiarity with Vico afterwards;

(e) in most cases, when some familiarity with Vico's thought

exists, it is superficial or based on outdated literature. Since the

revival of Vico studies is very recent, acquaintance with the latest

literature is essential for understanding his importance today;

(f) there are still practically no courses on Vico in colleges or

universities;

(g) even first-class public and university libraries often own

only a fraction of the recent publications dealing with Vico.

On the other hand, however, the impressive growth of the

presence of Vico in contemporary humanistic thought is

demonstrated by these facts:

(a) since the early sixties some prominent scholars have

introduced the discussion of a number of Vico's key ideas into

their own work. Among them are Isaiah Berlin (1960, 1965, 1969,

1974, 1976), Hans-Georg Gadamer (1960), Emilio Betti (1962),

Otto Apel (1963, 1980, 1981), Jürgen Habermas (1963, 1968),

Stephen Toulmin (1965, 1972, 1977), Jacques Derrida (1967),

Edward Said (1967, 1973, 1976, 1978, 1979), Hayden White (1968,

1969, 1973, 1976, 1977, 1978), Michel Foucault (1969), Ernesto Grassi

(1969, 1976, 1978, 1980, 1981), Nor throp Frye (1971, 1976, 1977,

1978), Leon Pompa (1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1976, 1981, 1982),

Harold Bloom (1973, 1975, 1976), Geoffrey Har tman (1980); 4 1

(b) a number of world-renowned thinkers who never mention

Vico and may never have read his work (e.g. Claude Lévi-Strauss,

Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jean Piaget, Ludwig Wittgenstein,

112

Susanne Langer) have been authoritatively shown in recent years to

have key affinities with him;4 2

(c) Marx, Nietzsche, Freud and Heidegger — four thinkers

who have greatly influenced most of the authors mentioned in (a)

and (b) — have also been found to have affinities with Vico;4 3

(d) some distinguished scholars have been greatly influenced in

their work by Vichian ideas, and their work continues to reveal such

influence (e.g. Isaiah Berlin, Edward Said, Hayden White, Stephen

Toulmin);4 4

(e) a large and increasing number of scholars in all fields of

the humanities has lately shown an interest in Vico. Such interest is

evidenced, e.g., by the fact that between July 1978 and December

31, 1982, over four hundred items have been added to the

bibliography of the writings by, about, or quoting Giambattista

Vico in English. It is also significant that during the past two

years nine important books entirely devoted to Vico in various

languages have appeared. These are: Donald P. Verene, Vico's

Science of Imagination; G. Tagliacozzo (ed.), Vico: Past and

Present; Giambattista Vico, Vie de Giambattista Vico, écrite par

lui-même, Présentation, traduction et notes par Alain Pons; Vico:

Selected Writings, edited and translated by Leon Pompa; Cesare

De Michelis (ed.), Vico e Venezia; Emanuele Riverso (ed.), Leggere

Vico; G. Tagliacozzo (ed.), Vico and Marx: Affinities and Con-

trasts; Juan Crux Cruz, Hombre e Historia en Vico; Richard

Wilhelm Schmidt, Die Geschichtsphilosophie G. Β. Vicos.

Considering all this, the thirteenth axiom of Vico's New

Science comes to mind, which says: "Uniform ideas originating

among entire people unknown to each other must have a common

ground of truth." Apart from the different context, the axiom

seems to suggest that, if so many leading contemporary scholars,

from so many fields and countries, independently of one another

manifest an unprecedented and increasing interest in Vico, this

phenomenon must have a special significance: Vico's thought must

have a "common ground of truth" very valuable for our time.

5

Let me now summarize and conclude the above reflections on

the newly emerged problem of the actual and potential

comparative standing and influence — and of the possible co­

existence and blending, mutatis mutandis — of some basic ideas of

113

Vico and of Marx in contemporary humanistic thought. The

following facts must be considered:

(a) today's widespread discredit of 'scientific Marxism, ' i.e. of

the overall Marxist ideology, at least among the great majority of

contemporary leaders in humanistic thought;

(b) the direct or indirect, implicit or explicit presence of

'humanist Marxist ' ideas in the background of the majority of

those thinkers;

(c) the affinities which exist between some of the ideas of Vico

and of Marx;

(d) the 'humanist Marxist' ideas accepted by contemporary leaders

in humanistic thought are often, as indicated above, closer to the

thought of Vico than to that of Marx;

(e) Vico's thought offers, so to speak, revised, soundly philo-

sophically-grounded versions of those 'humanist Marxist ' ideas;

(0 Vico's philosophy encompasses a number of topics on

which Marx 's ideology is, and cannot but be, silent;

(g) Vico's philosophy also encompasses a number of topics

which find no place in the systems of many or most outstanding

philosophers of any epoch.

All the above, it seems to me, suggest that, if the

contemporary leaders in the humanities — most of whom are

thoroughly conversant with the thought of Marx and indebted to

some Marxian ideas — were similarly acquainted with the thought

of Vico, they would accept the Vichian, rather than the Marxian,

version of the similar ideas of the two thinkers. They would thus

reap the advantages of a better founding of those ideas and,

possibly, the benefits of the increasingly appreciated Vichian way

of grounding and unifying human knowledge.

GIORGIO T A G L I A C O Z Z O

Institute for Vico Studies

New York, N.Y.

1 Giorgio Tagliacozzo, "Introductory Remarks," Vico and

Contemporary Thought, G. Tagliacozzo, M. Mooney and D.P. Verene,

eds. (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1979), I, pp. 3-4.2 See G. Tagliacozzo, "General Education as Unity of Knowledge: A

Theory Based on Vichian Principles," in Vico and Contemporary

Thought, op. cit., II, pp. 110-138.

114

3 G. Tagliacozzo, "Introductory Remarks," op. cit., pp. 6-7. On the

key importance of 'fantasia' in Vico, see Donald P. Verene, Vico's Science

of Imagination (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1981).4 Marx's arbitrary postulate of historical materialism' is comparable,

mutatis mutandis, to the controlling place which Freud gave to sex. On the

latter, Mary Midgley writes: "Freud's theory is not plausible

evolutionarily. The controlling place which he gave to sex over other

motives is bizarre and unexplained as an adaptation. Ethological evidence

makes it look odder and odder. Many motives which Freud took to be only

secondary offshoots produced by sexual repression — motives such as

curiosity, anxiety, aesthetic interest — appear freely in animals, without

repression, as independent motives with no sexual context. Thus, though

there may well be a constant mutual influence between the motives, there

can scarcely be a monolithic empire of the kind Freud proposed.

("Updating Freud," in London Review of Books, 16 September- - 6

October 1982, p. 18). The following conclusion of George L. Kline's "The

Question of Materialism in Vico and Marx" (in G. Tagliacozzo, ed., Vico

and Marx: Affinities and Contrasts [Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities

Press, 1983], pp. 124-25) is also interesting in this connection: "Marx's

striking insensitivity to the power — both constructive and destructive —

of national and ethnic traditions is, I suspect, a special case of his broader

blindness to the linguistic, mythical and 'symbolic' dimensions of human

existence. Vico's theory can account, as Marx's cannot, for the

undiminished pull, in the closing decades of the twentieth century, of

religious, national, and ethnic loyalties."5 Leszek Kolakowski points out: "Marx seems to have imagined that

once the capitalists were done away with the whole world could become a

kind of Athenian agora: one had only to forbid private ownership of ma-

chines or land and, as by magic, human beings would cease to be selfish and

their interests would coincide in perfect harmony. Marxism affords no

explanation of how this prophecy is founded, or what reason there is to

think that human interests will cease to conflict as soon as the means of

production are nationalized (Main Currents of Marxism. New York and

Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981, III, Epilogue, p. 527).

Analogously, Hans-Georg Gadamer has written: "The concept of 'society

close to nature' is probably another case of romantic mirror-image .... In

Karl Marx it appears as a kind of natural law that limits the validity of the

socio-economic theory of the class struggle." (Truth and Method. New

York: Seabury Press, 1975, p. 245). See, also François George, "The

Legend of Communism," in Social Research 49 n. 2 (Summer 1982), pp.

338-358. According to Ernest Gelmer, "Marxism is a collective soteriology.

It is a faith which, though it promises no salvation to individuals, does

very emphatically offer it to humanity at large. It differs from Christianity

in at least two further aspects: salvation is not selective, nor conditional on

115

merit or selection, but will descend upon all of us without distinction, if we

are still here when the time comes. It will come without condition or, for

that matter, consultation. We will be saved whether we like it or not. It is

not in any way conditional on faith or on the endorsement of the truth by

those about to be blessed — though it is rather assumed that the truth will

by that stage become manifest and will be embraced. The potential for an

eventual and indeed inescapable salvation is built into the present. The

entelechy of salvation, the acorn/oak tree vision of social change, is central

to Marxism, and constitutes an important part of its appeal." ("Stagna-

tion without salvation," in Times Literary Supplement January 14, 1983,

27).6 See also below 4, 2, p. 104, and 5, (g), p. 113.

7 See Ernesto Grassi, "Vico, Marx and Heidegger," in Vico and

Marx: Affinities and Contrasts, op. cit., p. 233, and Ernesto Grassi,

Heidegger and the Question of Renaissance Humanism (Binghamton,

N.Y.: Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, State University

of New York at Binghamton, 1983), passim.8 See David Lachterman, "Vico and Marx: Notes on a Precursory

Reading," in Vico and Marx: Affinities and Contrasts, op. cit., p. 59:

"For Vico, in contrast [to Marx], the origin of human history does not lie

in technical production, nor is its telos the conquest of external nature.

Men make their own history by slow building, through their feats and

fables, a civil world of customs and rituals that tame and humanize their

pre-human, ferocious passions." On Vico and "historical materialism,"

see the important remarks by E.P. Thompson in The Poverty of Theory

and Other Essays (New York and London: Monthly Review Press, 1978),

pp. 84-88.9 See Vico and Marx: Affinities and Contrasts, op. cit.10 See Jonathan Culler, Ferdinand de Saussure (Penguin Modern

Masters, 1966), passim; Richard and Fernande De George (eds.), The

Structuralists from Marx to Lévi-Strauss (Garden City, N.Y. Doubleday,

1972), p. XII; and David Rubinstein. Marx and Wittgenstein: Social Praxis

and Social Explanation (London and Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul,

1982), p. 2. Robert Heilbroner analogously points out (Marxism: For and

Against. New York: Norton, 1980, pp. 16-17) that, as Freud discovered

"the unconscious as an integral part of mental life," so Marx discovered

"an unsuspected level of reality beneath the surface of history, above all

beneath the history of the period called 'capitalism'."11 See, e.g., Terence Hawkes, Structuralism and Semiotics (Berkeley:

University of California Press, 1977), pp. 11-15; Martin Jay, The

Dialectical Imagination (Boston: Little Brown & Co., 1973), p. 258. In

particular, on Vico and Freud, see, Silvano Arieti, "Vico and Modern

Psychiatry," in Vico and Contemporary Thought, op. cit., II, pp. 81-94;

on Vico and Wittgenstein, see Emanuele Riverso, "Vico and Wittgenstein,"

116

in Giambattista Vico's Science of Humanity (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins

Press, 1976), pp. 263-73; on Vico and Heidegger, see Ernesto Grassi,

"Vico, Marx and Heidegger," in Vico and Marx: Affinities and Contrasts,

op. cit., pp. 233-50, and Ernesto Grassi, Heidegger and the Question of

Renaissance Humanism, op. cit., passim. See also footnotes 42 and 43.12 Anthony Giddens, New Rules of Sociological Method (New York:

Basic Books, 1976), pp. 130 and 24 respectively.13 Richard Popkin states: "I think there is a much more important

reason for Descartes' being continually refuted by contemporary

philosophers. In his attempt to overcome scepticism Descartes offered a

dogmatic system that we all find incredible, replete with all sorts of

philosophical problems." (Review of E.M. Curley, Descartes Against the

Skeptics [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1978], in

Philosophy of the Social Sciences 12 [1982], p. 331).14 Stephen Toulmin, Human Understanding (Princeton: Princeton

University Press, 1972), p. 23.15 Anthony Giddens, op. cit., pp. 12-13. See also Richard Hudelson,

"Marx's Empiricism," in Philosophy of the Social Sciences 12 (1982), pp.

241-53.16 Anthony Giddens, "The Flux of the Real," in Times Literary

Supplement, Dec. 18, 1981, p. 1471: "New books on Marx appear almost

every week. Many may amount to nothing more than another journey

across numbingly familiar terrain, but the standard of scholarly endeavor

among those both for and against Marx, is far higher than it was; and

'Marxism' is now a highly variegated body of thought, certainly in some

respects at the cutting edge of current advances in social theory."17 Marx Wartofsky, "Philosophy," in The Left Academy, Berteli

Ollmann and Edward Vernoff, eds. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1982), p.

118.18 Berteli Oilman and Edward Vernoff, "Introduction" to The Left

Academy, op. cit., p. 1.19 R. and F. De George, The Structuralists from Marx to Lévi-Strauss,

op cit., XVIII. Lévi-Strauss also speaks of having "borrowed the notion of

structure from Marx and Engels, among others" (Structural Anthropology.

New York: Basic Books, 1963, p. 343). Edith Kurzweill discusses Marx's

influence on Lévi-Strauss in The Age of Structuralism (New York:

Columbia University Press, 1980), pp. 234-37.20 Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge (New York: Pantheon Books,

1980), p. 53. For an elaborate discussion of Foucault's views on Marx, see

Frank Lentricchia, "Reading Foucault (Punishment. Labor. Resistance),"

in Raritan I, No. 4 (Spring 1982), pp. 5-32, and II, No. 1 (Summer 1982),

pp. 42-70. On other aspects of Marx and Post-Structuralism, see, e.g.,

117

Michael Ryan, Marxism and Deconstruction (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins

University Press, 1982).21 Helmut Dubiel, "The Origins of Critical Theory: An Interview with

Leo Lowenthal," in Telos n. 49 (Fall 1981), p. 147.22 Anthony Giddens, New Rules of Sociological Method, op. cit.,

p. 12.23 Anthony Giddens, A Contemporary Critique of Historical

Materialism (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press,

1981), p. 2. Analogously, according to John Elster ("One Hundred Years of

Marxist Social Science," in London Review of Books, 16 June - 6 July 1983,

p. 8), "In the confrontation between Marxist and non-Marxist social theory

over the past century, some of the main Marxist tenets have been decisively re-

futed, while others have been absorbed into the shared framework of all social

scientists .... [The latter] do not form a fully coherent theory, but a loosely

integrated whole .... Marx's methodological views form a confused and

confusing amalgam of profound insights and utter nonsense."24 Marx Wartofsky, op. cit., pp. 128, 131 and 134.25 On Habermas, see Anthony Giddens, New Rules of Sociological

Method, op. cit., passim; Thomas McCarthy, The Critical Theory of

Jürgen Habermas (Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press, 1981); Raymond

Geuss, The Idea of a Critical Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press. 1981); John B. Thompson, Critical Hermeneutics (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1981); John B. Thompson and David Held

(eds.), Habermas: Critical Debates (Cambridge, Mass.: The M.I.T. Press,

1982).26 Jürgen Habermas, Theory and Practice (Boston: Beacon Press,

1973; original German edition, 1963), pp. 45-46, 73, 74, 75, 79, 242-45;

Knowledge and Human Interests (Boston: Beacon Press, 1971; original

German edition, 1968), pp. 148-49. Thompson and Held (op. cit., p. 1)

write that "Habermas has developed a theoretical orientation which is

relevant to a wide range of disciplines, from politics and sociology to

philosophy, psychology and linguistics." A similar statement could be

made about Vico. On Habermas and Vico, see Martin Jay, "Vico and

Western Marxism," in Vico: Past and Present, G. Tagliacozzo, ed.

(Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press, 1981), Vol. II, pp. 194-212; but see

also: Fulvio Tessitore, "Jürgen Habermas su Vico" (Bollettino del Centro

di studi vichiani IV [1974], 176-178); Susanna Manfrin, "Il Vico di

Habermas" (Filosofia oggi, I [1978], 31-36); Mario Agrimi, "Horkheimer,

lettore di Vico" (Itinerari, XVIII, n. 1 (April 1979), 39-41); Joseph Maier,

"Vico and Critical Theory," in Vico and Contemporary Thought, op. cit.,

II, pp. 188-189.

118

27 Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, op cit., p. 49; also 25, 81,

257, 269, 307, 310, 359. On Horkheimer and Vico, see especially Mario

Agrimi's very informative "Horkheimer, lettore di Vico," op. cit.; Joseph

Maier, "Vico and Critical Theory," op. cit.; and Eugenio Garin, "Max

Horkheimer su Vico" (Bollettino del Centro di studi vichiani V, 1975, pp.

143-44). The following remarks by Thompson and Held (op. cit., p. 2) are

also significant in this connection: "Under the guidance of Horkheimer ...

the [Frankfurt] Institute [for Social Research] was committed to a

programme of interdisciplinary study in which 'philosophers, sociologists,

economists, historians and psychologists must unite in a lasting working

partnership'. Horkheimer wished to overcome the division of labour in the

humanities and social sciences."28 Joseph Maier, op. cit., p. 188. Maier "had the good fortune to

count one of the members of the Frankfurt School, Max Horkheimer, as

his special teacher and fatherly friend" (p. 187).29 It is not entirely accurate to talk of the "humanist Marxism" of the

Frankfurt School, even though its members were not in favor of "scientific

Marxism" either. (See Martin Jay, "The Frankfurt School's Critique of

Marxist Humanism," in Social Research, Vol. 39, No. 2, Summer 1972).

However, this fine point does not appreciably affect my argument.30 Joseph Bleicher, Contemporary Hermeneutics (London and

Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980), p. 16.31 James Schwearingen, "Philosophical Hermeneutics and the

Renewal of Tradition," The Eighteenth Century, 22, no. 3 (1981), p. 196.

In this connection, see also John B. Thompson, "Introduction" to Paul

Ricoeur's Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1981, p. 6): "According to another view, however,

Hermeneutics is regarded as the demystification of a meaning presented to

the intepreter in the form of a disguise. This type of hermeneutics is

animated by suspicion, by a skepticism toward the given, and it is

characterized by a distrust of the symbol as a dissimulation of the real.

Ricoeur suggests that it is ... (this) type of hermeneutics which is practiced

by Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud. All three of these 'masters of suspicion'

look upon the contents of consciousness as in some sense 'false'; all three

aim to transcend the falsity through a reductive intepretation and

critique." What Thompson says about Marx, Nietzsche and Freud could

be extended, mutatis mutandis, to Vico. The following remarks by

Thompson in the same "Introduction" (p. 18) are also significant: "Freud

presents us with the startling discovery that consciousness is not a given but

a task, a task to be accomplished through the long and tortuous by-way of

a semantics of desire. Similarly the critique of ideology, as formulated by

Marx and developed in the writings of the so-called Frankfurt School,

proclaims consciousness to be the realm of falsehood. For everyday

attitudes in general are distorted representations of reality, concealing

119

and justifying the system of domination. The critique of ideology seeks to

unveil these distortions .... So reflection must be linked to hermeneutics not

only because existence can only be grasped in its external manifestations,

but also because immediate consciousness is an illusion which must be

unmasked and overcome through interpretative critique."32 Thomas M. Seebohm, "The Problem of Hermeneutics in Recent

Anglo-American Literature," Part II, in Philosophy and Rhetoric, Vol. 10,

No. 4, Fall 1977, pp. 212-21 A. See also Santo Mazzarino, Vico,

l'Annalistica e il Diritto (Naples: Guida Editori, 1971), pp. 15-17, and H.P.

Rickman, "Rhetoric and Hermeneutics," in Philosophy and Rhetoric, Vol.

14, No. 2, Spring 1981, pp. 100-101.33 See G. Tagliacozzo, "General Education as Unity of Knowledge: A

Theory based on Vichian Principles," in Vico and Contemporary Thought,

op. cit., II, pp. 110-138.34 On Toulmin and Vico, see L.M. Palmer, "Stephen Toulmin:

Variations on Vichian Themes," in Scientia, Vol. 117, 1982, pp. 89-96. On

p. 90 Palmer notes that "unlike many Vichian scholars, Toulmin pays

particular attention to the possible role that Vico's epistemic principles may

play in the knowledge of nature."35 Critical Inquiry 9 (September 1982), p. 93. On pp. 93-94 Toulmin

also says: "The current sharp distinction between scientific explanation

and hermeneutic interpretation was launched by Wilhelm Dilthey nearly a

century ago; and, in justice to Dilthey, we need to bear in mind that the

interpretive element in natural science was far less evident then than it is today.

Scientists nowadays view the world from a new and less rigid standpoint.

This period, which Frederick Ferre calls "postmodern science," differs

from the older one of "modern science" in just those respects that enable

us to reconcile the rational claims that have always been central to the

natural sciences with a new hermeneutic richness and variability .... It is a

pity then for scholars working in the humanities to continue shaping their

critical attitudes and theories by relying on a contrast with a modern

science that — among scientists themselves — no longer even seems to

exist. (In this respect, both Gadamer and Habermas share Heidegger's

instrumentalist misreading of science and technology as "value neutral"

enterprises without their own intrinsic goals or ideals and, in so doing,

involve themselves in a curious alliance with the positivists whom they

otherwise despise). Instead, we should ask scholars to pay more attention

to the elements of interpretation — even of hermeneutics — that have

nowadays become essential to both the natural and human sciences and to

base their comparisons between the sciences and the humanities not on the

assumed absence of hermeneutic interpretation from natural science but

rather on the different modes of interpretation characteristic of the two

general fields." In this connection, see also S. Toulmin, The Return to

Cosmology (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press,

120

1982), esp. pp. 201-213 (chapter on Gregory Bateson) and 254-55; and S.

Toulmin, "The Mozart of Psychology," review of several works by L.S.

Vygotsky, in New York Review of Books, Sept. 28, 1978, pp. 51-57.

Analogous remarks can be found in Hwa Yol Jung, "Phenomenology as a

Critique of Politics" (Human Studies 5 [1982]), pp. 175-179.36 See Vico: Past and Present, op. cit., I, pp. 99-116. The quotations

in the text are from pp. 113 and 110, respectively.37 On the hermeneutic dimension of natural science, the obvious

figures of Thomas Kuhn as well as the marginally less obvious one of Paul

Feyerabend, also come to mind. See Stephen Toulmin, "From Form to

Function: Philosophy and History of Science in the 1950s and Now," in

Daedalus, Summer 1977, pp. 154-156. According to David Papineau, "for

Kuhn and Feyerabend scientific facts were made, not discovered .... The

rejection of the 'given,' of the idea that sensory awareness gives us an

unimpeachable access to the data, binds together a surprising number of

contemporary philosophical schools: it joins the British linguistic

tradition of Wittgenstein, Ryle and Austin to the American neo-

pragmatism of Quine and Sellars, and there are similar ideas in French

structuralism and post-structuralism. (David Papineau, "Thinking up

reality," review of Paul K. Feyerabend, Philosophical Papers [Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1982], in Times Literary Supplement, October

1982, p. 1198).

The following passage by Karl R. Popper is also pertinent in this

connection: "I oppose the attempt to proclaim the method of understand-

ing as the characteristic of the humanities, the mark by which we may

distinguish them from the natural sciences. And when its supporters

denounce a view like mine as 'positivistic' or 'scientific', then I may

perhaps answer that they themselves seem to accept, implicitly and

uncritically, that positivism or scientism is the only philosophy appropriate

to the natural sciences .... Labouring the difference between science and

humanities has long been a fashion, and has become a bore. The method

of problem solving, the method of conjecture and refutation, is practiced

by both. It is practiced in reconstructing a damaged text as well as in

constructing a theory of radioactivity." (Objective Knowledge. Oxford:

Clarendon Press, 1972, p. 185).38 See, for instance, G. Tagliacozzo, "Vico: A Philosopher of the

Eighteenth — and Twentieth — Century," in Italica, 59, n.2 (Summer

1982), pp. 93-108.39 See G. Tagliacozzo, "Toward a History of Recent Anglo-American

Vico Scholarship," in New Vico Studies (New York: Institute for Vico

Studies, 1983), p. 10.

121

40 Over forty scholars contributed to Giambattista Vico: An

International Symposium, edited by G. Tagliacozzo and Hayden White

(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1969), which was published in

connection with the Vico tricentennial anniversary. The book received over

fifty reviews.41 See Vico in English: A bibliography of writings by and about

Giambattista Vico, Robert Crease, comp. (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.:

Humanities Press, 1978), and Supplement to Vico in English, published by

the Institute for Vico Studies (Humanities Press, 1981). Note: When the

date in parenthesis after the author's name differs from the one found in

the bibliography, such date refers to the earlier year when the author's

publication originally appeared in a language other than English.42 On Vico and Lévi-Strauss, see Edmund Leach, "Vico and Lévi-

Strauss on the Origins of Humanity," in Giambattista Vico: An

International Symposium, op. cit., pp. 309-318, and Jose' Guilherme

Merquior, "Vico et Lévi-Strauss," in L'Homme — Revue française

d'anthropologie, Χ, η. 2 (Avril-Juin 1970), pp. 82-93. On Vico and

Merleau-Ponty, see James Edie, "Vico and Existential Philosophy," in

Giambattista Vico: An International Symposium, op. cit., pp. 577-590. On

Vico and Piaget, see George Mora, "Vico, Piaget and Genetic

Epistemology," in Giambattista Vico's Science of Humanity, edited by

G. Tagliacozzo and Donald P. Verene (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins

University Press, 1976), pp. 365-392. On Vico and Wittgenstein, see

Emanuele Riverso, "Vico and Wittgenstein," op. cit. (see footnote 11). On

Vico and Langer, see Gillo Dorfles, "Myth and Metaphor in Vico and in

Contemporary Aesthetics," in Giambattista Vico: An International

Symposium, op. cit., pp. 579 and 581, and G. Tagliacozzo, "Epilogue," in

Giambattista Vico: An International Symposium, p. 610. 43

On Vico and Marx, see Vico and Marx: Affinities and Contrasts,

op. cit. On Vico and Nietzsche, see Vico and Marx: Affinities and

Contrasts, op cit., pp. 13-14, 25, 103, 380, 388-400, and Vico: Past and

Present, edited by G. Tagliacozzo (Humanities Press, 1981), I, 134, 178;

II, 89, 219. On Vico and Freud, see footnotes 4, 10 and 11. On Vico and

Heidegger, see footnotes 7 and 11. 44

See Vico in English, op. cit., and Supplement to Vico in English, op.

cit.