The New Science
The full title of the 1725 edition was Principj di una Scienza Nuova Intorno alla Natura delle Nazioni per la Quale si Ritruovano i Principj di Altro Sistema del Diritto Naturale delle Genti,[1] ending with a dedication to Cardinal Lorenzo Corsini, the future Pope Clement XII.
Vico began the third edition with a detailed close reading of a front piece portrait, examining the place of Gentile nations within the providential guidance of the Hebrew God.
A beam of light from the eye shines upon a brooch attached to the breastplate of “the lady with the winged temples who surmounts the celestial globe or world of nature”[4] (center right), which represents metaphysics.
"[7] By viewing these principles as universal phenomena which combined nature and government with language and philology,[4] Vico could insert the history of the Gentile nations into the supreme guidance by divine providence.
With the early Renaissance, Vico shares the call for recovering a "pagan" or "vulgar" horizon for philosophy's providential agency or for recognizing the providence of our human "metaphysical" minds (menti) in the world of our "political" wills (animi).
[14] Relying on a complex etymology, Vico argues in the Scienza Nuova that civilization develops in a recurring cycle (ricorso) of three ages: the divine, the heroic, and the human.
Vico's humanism (his returning to a pre-modern form of reasoning), his interest in classical rhetoric and philology, and his response to Descartes contribute to the philosophical foundations for the second Scienza Nuova.
Through an elaborate Latin etymology, Vico establishes not only the distinguishing features of first humans, but also how early civilization developed out of a sensus communis or common (not collective) sense.
Beginning with the first form of authority intuited by the giganti or early humans and transposed in their first "mute" or "sign" language, Vico concludes that “first, or vulgar, wisdom was poetic in nature.” This observation is not an aesthetic one, but rather points to the capacity inherent in all men to imagine meaning via comparison and to reach a communal "conscience" or "prejudice" about their surroundings.
It is by way of warning his age and those stemming from it of the danger of seeking truth in clear and distinct ideas blinding us to the real depths of life, that Vico calls our attention back to a classical art of moderating the course of human things, lest the liberty enjoyed in the "Republic" be supplanted by the anarchic tyranny of the senses.
While the transfer from divine to heroic to human ages is, for Vico, marked by shifts in the tropological nature of language, the inventional aspect of the poetic principle remains constant.
As such, the notion of topics as the loci or places of invention (put forth by Aristotle and developed throughout classical rhetoric) serves as the foundation for "the true", and thus, as the underlying principle of sensus communis and civic discourse.
The development of laws that shape the social and political character of each age is informed as much by master tropes as by those topics deemed acceptable in each era.
In the final, human age, the reflection that enables popular democracy requires appeals to any and all topics to achieve a common, rational law that is universally applicable.
Vico's major work was poorly received during his own life but has since inspired a cadre of famous thinkers and artists, including Karl Marx and Montesquieu.
