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Vico’s Philosophy of History – An Appraisal

Vivek Pachpande

(Submitted to Cardiff University as request by the Post-graduate Admission Committee)

In this essay we shall briefly explicate Vico’s philosophy of history accentuated in his work,

The New Science. In many respects Vico seems to be a forerunner of modern philosophy of

history. He anticipates the current neo-idealist trends in the philosophy of history. He also

forestalls Marxism to a phenomenally astute way.

His philosophy of history is based on formulation of general law-like structures which he

discovered through philology and history of jurisprudence. We shall (after elucidating his

philosophy of history) attempt to strengthen his position by salvaging the procedures to

formulate general laws for history as a science based on Hempel’s function of general laws in

history. Hempel proposes that historians do come up with valid explanatory schema (based on a

tacit assumption of general laws of history). What, precisely, leads historians to assume these

general laws is not answered by Hempel satisfactorily, (however we shall not attempt to answer

this question here). We can however try to fit Vico’s attempt of historical explanation using

Hempel’s covering general law-model.

Vico lived in the early age of enlightenment, 1668-1744, and wrote his famous treatise on

history The New Science which was published in 1725. He revised it and published it again in

1730, and yet again in 1744, shortly before his death.

Vico’s The New Science is clearly a philosophy of history. By means of three distinct doctrines

Vico establishes his philosophy of history.

First, in his The New Science, he attacks Cartesian assumption of clear and distinct ideas. For

Vico, there may be ideas that are clear and distinct, but these ideas could subsequently turn out

to be false. Although mathematical propositions satisfied the Cartesian criteria of self-evident

truths, certitude is not to be found in self-evidence of mathematical propositions, but in the fact

that mathematical systems are fabricated by human beings. The historian could achieve a more

profound knowledge than the natural philosopher precisely because Nature was not created by

humans; it was external to humans. In the case of history, as opposed to natural science, the

world to be studied and comprehended is the human world.

Secondly, he examines the history of language. He proposes three types of languages, (signs,

metaphors, and words) (corresponding to each phase of development of the civilisation).

Thirdly, he examines the history of jurisprudence. (A) The laws are divinely ordained, (B) they

are exactly worded so they are cruel and harsh (brooking no exceptions), (C) they become

rational and humane.

Based on these three doctrines he proposes that every nation or civilisation goes through three

distinct phases. These three phases are coupled with three discrete types of languages.

Corresponding with these three distinct phases and languages he also proposes that the

civilisations acquire three dissimilar types of jurisprudence. What makes the recursive human

progress in the given civilisation is the mechanism of ‘class struggle’. It is noteworthy for us to

remember that Vico is suggesting these developments of civilisations not in their simultaneity,

but each civilisation goes through these phases independently of each other. It is however

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stressed by him that they do go through these distinct phases. This development of the nation is

the ideal one, and each nation undergoes it; hence the ideal and eternal history of the gentile

nations.

This historical development, which Vico suggested, was achieved as a "scienza" or science.

Vico proposed that it is possible to establish the study of history or what he calls philology or

ideal eternal history of nations and the course they must run. This, as mentioned above, is

possible through the study of language and laws.

Vico Writes:

This New Science or metaphysic, studying the common nature of nations in the light of

divine providence, discovers the origins of divine and human institutions among the

gentile nations, and thereby establishes a system of the natural law of the gentiles,

which proceeds with the greatest equality and constancy through the three ages which

the Egyptians handed down to us as the three periods through which the world has

passed up to their time. These are (1) the age of the gods, in which the gentiles believed

they lived under divine governments, and everything was commanded them by auspices

and oracles, which are the oldest institutions in profane history. (2) The age of the

heroes, in which they reigned everywhere in aristocratic commonwealths, because of a

certain superiority of nature, which they held themselves to have over the plebs. (3) The

age of men, in which all men recognized themselves as equal in human nature, and

therefore there were established first the popular commonwealths and then the

monarchies, both of which are forms of human government. (The New Science, Idea of

the Work, paragraphs 31-32).

An example of this cycle is drawn from Rome.

1. The mythical Hercules symbolises the period when rebellions within the family against

the fathers produces a feudal society.

2. Sharp divisions are established by law between patricians and plebeians. (The New

Science, Idea of the Work, Paragraph 17-18).

3. This is followed by the Struggle of the Orders in which the plebeians achieve crucial

rights such as the Law of the Twelve Tables, the election of Tribunes and inter-

marriage. In other words, civil sovereignty is formed within a republic.

4. Yet the possibility of acquiring personal wealth and power which the Republic opens

up, leads to discontent and unrest among the people.

5. During the late Republic which witnesses combined forces of individualism and

barbarian invasion, the Empire collapses. (The New Science, Idea of the Work,

paragraphs 25-29).

Vico wants to account for the domain of profane history of the post-delluvian gentiles, that is to

say, the history of nations as they were established after Noa's flood. For some obscure reason,

he omitted the history of Hebraic people and history of Christ. His model of study was that of

Hellenic classic Greeks and the Romans. The exclusion of Hebraic people can be accounted for

Vico's belief that the post-delluvian age was the age of archaic humans, where after the flood

they had lost whatever civilisation, culture, and language they had. The means Vico employs is

the means of empathetic understanding that is to say, thinking of one’s position in the position

of a historical actor.

Let us now turn to those three stages in the development of ideal nations:

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The first stage is what Vico calls the age of gods. This age signifies the age of primitive men.

Humans in this stage were living in the forestlands, under roof of nature. Slowly the humans

develop religion, institution of marriage and family which is patriarchal.

The three institutions support this stage, religion, burial of the dead and marriage. Religion is

primitive, brutal and authoritarian. Family and marriage settles inheritance, patrimony. The rule

of the patriarch is absolute; this absolute obeisance prepares society to enter in to a next phase,

the phase of the city-states, the age of the heroes. (The New Science, Idea of the Work,

paragraphs 8-14).

The second stage is what Vico calls the age of the heroes. Before Vico turns to describe the

second age, the age of the heroes, he talks about two transitional stages which sort of fall

between the age of gods and the age of heroes. The people who had not accepted the rule of the

patriarchs and religious authority had lived deep in the forestlands, which are clear and were

known as asylums. The patriarchs who killed the violent external people, their followers had

gotten asylums with the patriarchs, hence the word familia the root word from which the word

family arises. Forest clearings turn in to villages whose head is still the patriarch who is the

familial, religious authority and the king. The refugees had to work on the land, hence the

development of tribal system. The refugees since do not possess sanction for marriage, their

offspring are not subject to laws of patrimony.

The refugee’s rebel and are given the first agrarian law, which gives them a status of serfs. This

ensures that the serfs get to stay on the land, which they cultivate; they can pass this land to

their children provided the children accept the authority of the patriarch.

The heroic patriarchs unite based on their class-consciousness and create an aristocratic

commonwealths against the serfs. Laws are based on exact worded agreements, which must be

carried out without exception, laws are severe, the goal is comfort for both, aristocrats and

plebs. Characteristic of this age is imagination.

The third stage is what Vico calls the age of men. The plebeians continue to fight for their

rights and they get their rights in three stages, first recognition of their families, through the

institution of marriage, second, citizenship as more and more plebs are forced to become

soldiers and finally, the right to hold office in the state. Laws are now not exactly worded

agreements; they are interpreted as 'natural laws' based on reason. Culture develops; this heralds

the rise of democratic republics. Democratic republics are inherently unstable, as the classes are

not extinct, but many classes get political powers which results in civil wars.

Two types of leaders facilitate the development of nation, the compassionate leaders who fight

for equality and ambitious leaders who bring monarchy back with civil rights and rule of law.

However, this in turn results in softness of the culture and finally despotic rulers destroy the

nation.

Characteristic of this age is 'reason', which begins as a practical rationality resulting in critical

and sceptical phenomenon. Imagination is supplanted with reductive reasoning. Religion as a

cohesive force is cancelled out; laws become more and more humane which results in

decadence.

This cycle repeats itself over and over again.

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The problem with this kind of erection of inductive generalisation of universal laws of history

as Collingwood has pointed out in his article ‘the nature and aims of philosophy of history’, is

that it treats historical facts as settled, and that there is no dispute about it. This is problematic;

no historical facts are finally settled by historians.

Collingwood here is attacking firstly the distinction between historian and a philosopher of

history. He also is targeting the foundations for formalisation of general laws of history. His

point is that the material used to formulate general laws is itself historical. No historical facts

can be said to be fully proven, there will always remain some doubts about them. Therefore,

this type of philosophy of history will fail to formulate any general laws. Thirdly, Collingwood

is proposing that historical facts are unique, and cannot lend themselves for generalisation.

The charge that history cannot formulate and use generalised universal laws is answered most

satisfactorily by Karl Hempel in his 1942-paper ‘function of general laws in history’.

According to Hempel, history is a science because it does have its own valid explanatory

schema, not as rigorous as physics, but nonetheless a science.

All valid explanations require the general law–universal conditional propositions.

Function of the general laws is prediction and explanation. There is a possibility of deduction of

the event to be explained from series of laws and given initial conditionals. These initial

conditionals for historian are always preceding and causal conditions.

Explanations based on general law does not explain the event in its generality, it purports to

explain a particular property of an event. Valid explanations can occur only when there are

general laws. These general laws connect cause and effect in a deductive structure. What we

can term deductive hypothetical method or normological method. According to Hempel, that is

the only valid explanation we know. Pseudo explanations in history would call down upon

principles like fate and destiny.

Therefore, in the absence of general laws in history what we will get is tropes, which appeal to

our emotions through vague analogies.

There are three things scientific explanations can be tested by:

1. Initial conditions are always subject to empirical verification

2. Universal hypotheses should be subject to empirical verification

3. The inferences drawn must be valid, the world is complex, but the explanation must be

simple.

The objection to this epistemological model of historical understanding can be that science is

predictive, given an initial set of conditions, we predict a future state and we verify those

predictions through experimentation. However, in history, there is no room for prediction, we

cannot experiment in history.

Hempel's take on this issue is that the distinction between explanation and prediction is not a

function of a logical form. In other words, the logical form of an explanation of a past event is

in fact identical with a logical form of prediction of a future event. The difference lies in the

temporal position of an analyst. When we explain an event, we explain it in terms of the past.

When we predict an event, we predict it in terms of future; the event is not yet occurred. Many

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of the explanations carried out in natural sciences are not predictive; the advent of a theory of

nuclear winter was used by scientists to explain the demise of dinosaurs.

Sometimes we do not know how to articulate a universal law but nevertheless we assume there

is one with valid reason to assume. Sometimes we cannot come up with universal law because

the hypothesis in question is probabilistic, and not certain, but in both these instances, we do

come up with valid but incomplete explanations. Historians do not offer explanations based on

universal laws, but they do offer explanatory sketch.

Historical explanations in fact are valid and history is homothetic in its explanatory structure.

Hence, when Vico is offering a model of ‘Ideal eternal history of the gentile nations’, he is

using a valid explanatory sketch. This is because the hypothesis of class-struggle as a

mechanism of history (as Vico maintains), is probabilistic, but explains the historical

development in a structure of causal connections.

If we employ Hempel’s general covering law-model, to lend support to Vico’s suggestions,

then we will end up explaining a particular historical event. We can possibly be able to explain

that particular event in question by using causal structure.

Hence, for instance, we can possibly be able to explain the primitive religion of humankind

using the ‘fear of nature and natural forces’ as Vico himself does. We can perhaps explain the

rise of family, transition of religion, transition of language, conversion of laws … etc. it might

prove difficult to attempt an explanation of history as eternal and recursive human progress as

Vico is suggesting. Explanation of this kind cannot appeal to a covering general law-model, and

Collingwood’s charge to such type of philosophy of history stands unanswered. However,

history as recursive series of events itself can be a tacit assumption. This assumption in turn is

possibly based on another assumption, namely that the human nature is constant. Vico himself

seems to be in favour of this assumption, which in turn is proven by his investigations in to

philology and jurisprudence.

Vico is suggesting that there is a uniform human nature underlying a universal historical

process. Universal human beings, faced with recurring civilizational challenges, produce the

same set of responses over time. This, in fact, informs his interpretation of history.

References:

Giambattista Vico, The New Science, trans. Thomas Goddard Bergin and Max Harold Fish

(NewYork: Cornell University Press, 1948).

R.G. Collingwood, “The Nature and Aims of a Philosophy of History,” Proceedings of the

Aristotelian Society 25 (1924-1925): 151-174.

Carl Hempel, “The Function of General Laws in History,” Journal of Philosophy 39 (1942):

35-48

Paul C Perrotta, “Giambattista Vico, Philosopher-Historian,” The Catholic Historical Review

20 (1935): 384-410.

Leon Pompa, “Vico's Science,” History and Theory 10 (1971): 49-83.

George De Santillana, “Vico and Descartes,” Osiris 9 (1950): 565-580