3
" The constancy of philosophy is based on a proper comprehension of our own human nature. Vico’s purpose in De constantia philosophiae is to combine Platonic philosophy with Christian doctrine and to distinguish it from the falsity of Stoic and Epicurean philosophy, in terms of both their metaphysical and their moral doctrines. Vico begins his treatment of philosophy by calling attention to the Augustinian distinction of nosse, velle, and posse (knowledge, will, and power) and reminds the reader that these are the basis of all divine and human learning (De con. philos., ch. 1; see also Notae in lib. alt., no. 3). He emphasizes the sense in which these three elements are the basis of the definition of God and are also the principles necessary to the mind for any science, and for virtue. Vico understands these elements as a circle that goes from God to man to God, from the infinite mind to the human mind, in such a way that the human mind is taken back to its dependency on the divine (De uno, conclusio). "
― , Knowledge of Things Human and Divine: Vico’s New Science and "Finnegans Wake"
6
" The skeptic can argue back at Vico. But, as Vico holds in the Universal Law, skepticism is ultimately not an intellectual matter but a social matter. There cannot be a society of skeptics. Neither could there be what Polybius believes—a society of philosophers (De con. philos., ch. 4; cf. NS 179, 1043, 1110). All societies require religion, and all philosophers require society in which to live. There is no society whose basis is pure reason.
Vico’s ultimate answer to skepticism is his conception of ‘‘true heroic wis- dom’’ (‘‘vere heroica sapientia’’), which is: ‘‘To know with natural facility the external trues, to act with everyone and in every case with full and open freedom, to speak always truly, and to live with complete delight of the spirit [animus], in a way that conforms to reason’’ (De uno, ch. 19). This conception of ‘‘heroic wisdom’’ foreshadows Vico’s conception of ‘‘heroic mind’’ in his oration of 1732, where it becomes a doctrine of human education. The answer to the skeptic is ultimately the Socratic attempt simply to continue to philosophize. In the additions Vico wrote to the New Science in 1731, he explains skepticism as a symptom of the third age in ‘‘ideal eternal history,’’ when society becomes wholly secular. Skepticism is a corruption of Socrates’s doc- trine that he ‘‘knows nothing.’’ In Socrates’s hands it is a heroic principle that motivates the pursuit of truth and virtue; in the hands of the Skeptics it is a principle of the nothingness of thought (see Vico’s ‘‘demonstration by historical fact against skepticism,’’ NS 1363–64). "
― , Knowledge of Things Human and Divine: Vico’s New Science and "Finnegans Wake"
7
" As Vico portrays heroic wisdom in the above passage it is social, a way to thinking that instructs, delights, and moves. The skeptic is unable to attempt heroism of thought. The skeptic suffers from a lack of courage, a timidity of soul, and little can be done about it by way of a cure. Heroic wisdom is connected to piety ( pietas), which is dutifulness not only toward God in Chris- tian doctrine but also, as in Platonic philosophy, toward parents, relatives, and one’s native country or city (De con. philos., ch. 4). Vico’s last words in the New Science are that this science is inseparably bound to the study of piety, and ‘‘he who is not pious cannot be truly wise’’ (NS 1112). Wisdom, as Joyce says, requires ‘‘a genuine dash of irrepressible piety’’ (FW 470.30–31) that the skeptic is unable to reach.
Vico takes from Plato, but more accurately from the Christian Neo-Platonic tradition, three metaphysical doctrines: ideas as eternal truths, the immortality of the spirit or animus, which is subsumed under the human mind or mens as the seat of the eternal truths, and divine providence, that is, the divine mind that governs the eternal order of things and that is the ground whereby we come to know the eternal truths. Against these three doctrines Vico places the metaphysics of the Stoics and the Epicureans. He rejects the doctrine of fate ( fatum) of the Stoics because it denies free will. He rejects the doctrine of chance (casus) of the Epicureans because it explains everything in terms of void and body, denying the incorporeality of the mind. "
― , Knowledge of Things Human and Divine: Vico’s New Science and "Finnegans Wake"
10
" Only human beings, Vico says, are free. Liberty and its two parts, dominion and tutelage, are the sources of all laws and civil society (ch. 4; De uno, 74). A human being is born free, and this freedom takes the two basic shapes of the right to property, to ownership of what is necessary and useful to the person’s existence, and the right to protect oneself against transgression. Without these three just powers of humanity there can be no civil society. Vico’s principles of humanity as given here are jurisprudential. In the New Science his principles of humanity remain three in number, but they appear as social institutions rather than rights: religion, marriage, and burial. Vico’s three rights in the Universal Law derive from human nature itself. Vico’s three principles in the New Science are claimed to be customs observed by all nations, whether barbarous or civilized (NS 333). Vico conceives of these principles anthropologically: they are what denote a human community as opposed to an animal society. "
― , Knowledge of Things Human and Divine: Vico’s New Science and "Finnegans Wake"
11
" Having said that from pudor and libertas comes liberalitas, Vico does not discuss this further. Associated with the studia humanitatis, which Vico con- nects to the general meaning of humanitas, is Cicero’s term artes liberales (liberalis, relating to freedom). The liberal arts are the ‘‘humanities.’’ ‘‘Liberality’’ is the quality or state of being free, of kindness, courtesy, or generosity. If we speculatively extend Vico’s mention of liberalitas it suggests that the law, once beyond the enactment and support of rights basic to human nature, contains and promotes a humane wisdom. Law extends the original feeling of common humanity that takes shape in the basic uses of language in human society. This humane wisdom is justice, in the Platonic and humanist sense of proportion or balance in the faculties of the soul, and in the order of society.
Vico adds to his principles of humanity two principles of history. He says universal history is the history of things and the history of words (rerum et verborum). Etymology is the history of words, and mythology is the first history of things (ch. 7). This establishes the detailed exposition of Varro’s obscure period of the nations that is reformulated as ‘‘poetic wisdom’’ (sa- pienza poetica) in the second book of the New Science, its longest book. Etymology, as in the Cratylus, allows us access to the original meanings of the words of languages. But at the end of the Cratylus Socrates turns from words to the things themselves. Mythologies give us the first histories, as Vico ex- plains in the Dissertationes of the third book of the Universal Law. Vico says in the New Science: ‘‘The first science to be learned should be mythology or the interpretation of fables’’ (NS 51). "
― , Knowledge of Things Human and Divine: Vico’s New Science and "Finnegans Wake"