The Lasting Influence of Vico: On the Tercentenary of His Birth

Author(s): Angelo A. De Gennaro

Source: Italica, Vol. 45, No. 4 (Dec., 1968), pp. 403-409
Published by: American Association of Teachers of Italian
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THE LASTING INFLUENCE OF VICO:
ON THE TERCENTENARY OF HIS BIRTH *
Giambattista Vico was not well known
during
his lifetime.
Neither his strenuous
efforts,
nor the
pomposity
and
ignorance
of his
contemporaries
would
give
him the
glory
to which he
aspired.
Like
Dante,
he had a
great
desire for
recognition
or
immortality
but this desire was never satisfied in his lifetime.
Did not Vico write that he had sent the Scienza nuova into a
desert?
" In
questa
citta si io fo conto di averla mandata al de-
serto;
e
sfuggo
tutti i
luoghi
celebri
per
non abbattermi in
coloro a'
quali
l'ho
mandata, e,
se
per
necessita
egli addivenga,
di
sfuggita
li saluto: nel
quale
atto non dandomi essi ne
pure
un riscontro di averla
ricevuta,
mi confermano
l'opinione
che
io l'abbia mandata al deserto."
'
Vico's desire for
glory,
which
sprang
from the most secret recesses of his
heart,
was never
realized. But
during
the nineteenth
century
he became famous.
His
original philosophical output
did not remain confined to
the
provincial
and isolated
city
of
Naples.
In
fact,
it
swept
out
of those boundaries
and, sixty years
after his
death,
Vico
became what is
nowadays
known as a
celebrity.
The
obscurity
of his
style,
which
might
have
impeded
his
popularity,
served
instead to
strengthen
it: scholars
approached
the Scienza nuova
with a
great
deal of caution and therefore with
understanding.
Vico was
unquestionably
the
outstanding philosopher
in
nineteenth
century
Italy.
Readers sensed that he
possessed
all
the intellectual
qualities
needed for
analysis,
that his
range
of
topics
covered
every
known
subject
but that his examination
of each was
deep
and
penetrating.
Readers also felt that no
historical
problem
ever rebuffed or
discouraged
him,
that he
applied
himself as
seriously
to historical matters as to the most
detailed
points
of
scholarship.
The author of the Scienza nuova
compelled
the reader's admiration
by
the sheer marvel of his
intelligence,
by
the intoxication of his historical
discoveries,
*
This
paper
was
presented
at the Fourteenth International
Congress
of
Philosophy, Vienna,
1968.
403
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ANGELO A.
DE GENNARO
by
the
joy
of his
groping
into the
mysterious past
which held
him in its
grip.
Vico assumed
spiritual supremacy
over Italian
writers of the Ottocento:
Foscolo, Manzoni, Cuoco,
De
Sanctis,
Lomonaco,
Salfi and others were idealiter his
disciples.
Vico's influence extended
beyond Italy. Michelet,
Ballanche, Jouffroy,
Lerminier, Chateaubriand, Cousin,
Laurent, Vacherot, Weber,
Baader and others were students
of Vico's
thought.
Michelet enlists our
sympathy,
his soul
reaches out to us
through
his
work, touching
us in a thousand
different
ways.
It is Vico's Scienza nuova which
gives
philosophic
sanction to Michelet's
spontaneous
belief that the
collectivity,
and not its charismatic
leader,
shapes history.
For
Chateaubriand,
Christianity
is never
merely
an abstract
concept
but a
living reality
which he feels
existing
all around
him and which
envelops
him
completely.
His Genie du
Christianisme,
with its stress on the
beauty
of the Christian
ritual,
its
glorification
of the medieval
ages
of
faith,
reminds
us of Vico's
profound religiosity,
of his severe
respect
for
religion.
Whenever Cousin
approaches
man's
greatest problems
-those
concerning justice, morality, liberty,
for
example
-
he
impresses
us as never
considering
them in abstract terms
but
always
in terms of
man,
the creature of flesh and
blood,
historical man. This is the result of Vico's influence. Vico's
readers or students in France came from all walks of life:
they
included not
only
scholars but also the
bourgeois,
men and
women. Beneath the surface of this interest there was an
element of true
longing
to
gain
a
knowledge
of the laws of
history.
This can be seen as we read the novels of Balzac or
watch the
pathetic
efforts at
self-improvement by
Flaubert's
Bouvard and Pecuchet. Vico's
popularity
is attested to
by
Denis:
"
Vico
qu'on
ne
peut
maintenant se
passer
de citer." 2
The French thus considered Vico's Scienza niuova as an
important
tool for the
understanding
of human
history.3
Vico's
reputation
in nineteenth
century Italy
endured from
year
to
year, spreading increasingly
and
continuously.
I shall
point
out two facts as evidence:
first,
the Scienza niuova was
reprinted
numerous
times; second,
there was the
emergence
of two
opposite
trends of
interpretation.
Catholic and
404
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THE LASTING INFLUENCE OF VICO
rationalistic scholars
fought
each other for the true
exegesis
of
Vico:
Tommaseo, Rosmini, Gioberti,
on one
side;
Bertrando
Spaventa
and the
Hegelians,
on the other. Without
always
appreciating
the full
strength
of
Vico,
these
interpreters
directed
their effort toward the view which
they
believed to be correct
and true to the facts. In the final
analysis,
it was love for Vico
which dominated them. This love sustained them and is
manifested in their
writings.
In the late nineteenth
century,
the faithful who in
Italy
and France followed in Vico's
footsteps
were numerous indeed:
De
Sanctis, Sorel,
Fustel de
Coulanges,
others. De Sanctis
applied
Vico's
principles
to aesthetics and
literary
criticism.
His view of
poetry
as a
pre-logical category
and as an
artistically
successful incarnation of the content of
inspiration
is
intimately
connected with Vico's doctrine of
poetry
as
fantasia:
" I1 con-
tenuto
puo
essere
immorale,
o
assurdo,
o
falso,
o
frivolo;
ma
se in certi
tempi
e in certe circostanze ha
operato potentemente
nel cervello
dell'artista,
ed e diventato una
forma,
quel
conte-
nuto e immortale. Gli dei d'Omero sono morti: l'liade e ri-
masta. Puo morire l'Italia ed
ogni
memoria di
guelfi
e
ghibel-
lini: rimarra la Divina Commedia. I1 contenuto e
sottoposto
a
tutte le vicende della storia: nasce e muore: la forma e im-
mortale."
4
De Sanctis'
emphasis
on the world of literature as
an autonomous cosmos
closely
connected with the whole life of
the human soul is a
corollary
of Vico's
conception
of culture
as
unity.
Sorel
frequently quotes
Vico as an
authority
and his
stress on the class
struggle
is
undoubtedly
the result not
only
of his Marxian studies but of his
reading
of the Scienza nuova.
In this work Sorel found elements which tended to
emphasize
the
importance
of barbarism or violence as a factor in the
renewal of a decadent culture. But whereas Vico had
only
an
intuitive sense of barbarism as a creative
force,
Sorel
presents
us with a
complete
and
systematic development
of the
theory
of violence. Vico had understood barbarism as an
important
stage
in human
development;
Sorel on this basis
proceeded
to
build a
general
doctrine of
society.
Fustel de
Coulanges,
a true
student of
Vico, goes
a
long way
in the direction of the
Neapolitan
thinker when he sets into full relief the
importance
405
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ANGELO A. DE GENNARO
of
religion
in the
political
and social evolution of Greece and
Rome:
"
A
comparison
of beliefs and laws shows that a
primitive
religion
constituted the Greek and Roman
family,
established
marriage
and
paternal authority,
fixed the order of
kinship,
and
gave
sanction to the
right
of
property
and to that of
inheritance."
5
There were other scholars who were less creative
and less influential than De
Sanctis, Fustel,
and
Sorel,
but who
likewise show the
impact
of his
thought.
In his book on Vico
as a critic of
Descartes,
E.
Bouvy compared
Vico with Dante
and
highlighted
his role as an
antagonist
of Descartes. In the
last
part
of the nineteenth
century
Vico was the unrivalled
master of
every
student of
history.
It is not in
aesthetics, history,
or
philosophy
alone that
Vico's influence was so
penetrating
and effective. Vico's
political
ideas were
unquestionably
familiar to
many
liberal statesmen
of the Ottocento who had made the Scienza nuova their livre
de chevet.6 The idea of the State as an
organic growth
and not
as the result of
empty conceptual
abstractions was a
consequence
of this
familiarity.
Moreover,
it
may
be stated
that Vichian realism enabled a
political figure
such as Croce
to save
Italy
from the
deadly grip
of doctrinaire Communism.
On the intellectual
plane
it
may
be asserted that historians or
political
theorists such as
Villari,
Salvemini and
others,
who
strove to understand Italian
political
life
during
the last
part
of the nineteenth
century,
were indebted to Vico's
thought:
a
Vichism was thus
developed
which stressed realism and not
utopian
intellectualism.
Vico's ideas
inspired, directly
or
indirectly, every theory
or
system
of historical
thought.
It is clear that
Heyne's
view
of
myth
as sermo
symbolicus
follows the
footsteps
of
Vico;
that
Herder's and Humboldt's
concept
of
language
as
poetic
creation
owes a
great
deal to Vico's
conception
of
language
as the
product
of
fantasia.
It is obvious that De Sanctis must have
gained
his view of Dante from certain remarks in the Scienza
nuova and from Vico's letter to Gherardo
degli Angioli
(December
26, 1725);
that Vico's view of art as an eternal
category
of the human soul counted for
something
in
Hegel's
406
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THE LASTING INFLUENCE OF VICO
thought.
It is safe to state that Niebuhr and Mommsen would
not have
developed
their
particular approach
to Roman
history
had
they
not been
acquainted
with the Scienza nuova. And
finally
it is a fact that Vico reinforced the views of eminent
German scholars:
"
The
extraordinary
merit of Vico was not
recognized until,
two
generations
later,
German
thought
had
reached on its own account a
point
akin to his
own, through
the
great blossoming
of historical studies which took
place
in
Germany
in the late
eighteenth century.
When that
happened,
German scholars rediscovered Vico and attached a
great
value
to
him,
thus
exemplifying
his own doctrine that ideas are
propagated
not
by diffusion,
like articles of
commerce,
but
by
the
independent discovery by
each nation of what it needs at
any given stage
in its own
development."
7
It is not hard to demonstrate that Vico's influence is still
with us
today:
"
Si
potrebbe
anzi
presentare
la storia ulteriore
del
pensiero
come un ricorso delle idee del Vico." 8 Would a
Giovanni Gentile ever have existed had not Vico trodden his
path
before
him, establishing
the triadic definition of the
human
spirit
as
art,
religion,
and
philosophy?
Would Croce's
view of art as
pre-logical activity,
of
politics
as an eternal
human
category
have ever been set
up
without Vico? How
many philosophical
minds would not be what
they
are but for
the
pervasively deep
influence of Vico:
Fubini, Ciardo,
Cor-
sano,
H. P.
Adams,
Paul
Hazard,
Caponigri,
De
Ruggiero,
Kurt
Breysig,
Gerhardt
Dulckheit,
etc.? The
Spenglerian
view
of world
history
as a series of
autonomous,
"windowless"
cultures, Toynbee's historiography
with its
emphasis
on
religion
as the creative factor of
civilization, even,
in a
sense,
the
writings
of Edmund
Wilson, and,
more
directly,
the
"
circularity"
of the structure of James
Joyce's Finnegan's
Wake are the result of Vico's
inspiration.
Does not
Joyce
divide
his book
according
to Vico's view of the succession of
political
forms:
theocracy, aristocracy, democracy, monarchy?
Vichianism
represents
one of the
major
streams in
living
historical
thought.9
And in the
principles
of
historiography
which Charles A.
Beard, Croce, Durant, Commager,
and
407
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ANGELO A. DE GENNARO
Collingwood practiced
or
practice today
it is not difficult to see
traces of Vico's influence at work.10
Thus this man who was born three centuries
ago (1668)
still seems relevant to us
today.
Of
how
many
historians,
thinkers,
or aestheticians can this be said? And he seems not
merely present,
but close to us. We feel the same
proximity
to him that we feel for
contemporary living beings
of solid
flesh and blood. Whoever takes the trouble to
study
Vico's
ideas
thoroughly
cannot
help
admire the man as much as the
depth
of his
mind.1l
In the
profound
solution of some historical
or
philosophical problems
as well as in the enthusiastic
dedication he
put
into
everything
he
did,
Vico
impresses
himself
upon
us like one of our
contemporaries.
Historically
Vico's influence on the
generations
which
followed him
appears
to us to be that of a
powerful enlightener.
Let us
jump sixty years
after his
death,
and consider Italian
society
at the moment when it went into a
process
of self-
scrutiny following
the
Napoleonic
wars and the French
occupation
of
Italy.
That was the
Italy
of Vincenzo Cuoco and
Ugo
Foscolo. Cuoco's belief that a revolution cannot be
exported
from one
country
to another because the historical conditions
are different is
consistently
one of Vico's
major
criteria of
judgment:
"
I
Saggio
infatti deve essere inserito nella vasta
letteratura antirivoluzionaria ed antifrancese che fiori durante
lo scorcio del '700 e
sugli
albori dell'800... La mania
per
le
nazioni estere
prima avvilisce,
indi
immiserisce,
finalmente
ruina una
nazione,
spegnendo
in lei
ogni
amore
per
le cose
sue." 12 Foscolo who asserts that the cult of the dead as well as
marriage, justice,
and
religion
are the constant features of
every
civilization,
traits of the comune natura delle
nazioni, ploughs
again
the furrow
opened by
the Scienza nuova. It is
strikingly
clear that these two
great
men owe their main intellectaul
inspiration
to Vico.
This short
paper
can
only
indicate the main
points
of Vico's
influence
upon Italy
and the
European
world. This influence
was decisive in almost all manifestations of
culture,
from
religion
to
aesthetics,
from ethics to
historiography.
This is
408
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THE LASTING INFLUENCE OF VICO
why
we continue to
study
his works
today
and
why
we feel
bound to honor his name on the
tercentenary
of his birth.
ANGELO A. DE GENNARO
Loyola University of
Los
Angeles
1
G. B.
Vico, Autobiografia (Bari, 1911), p.
175.
2
Quoted by
B.
Croce,
La
filosofia
di G. B. Vico
(Bari, 1953), p.
328.
3
P. Hazard in Revue des Cours et
Conferences,
XXXII
(1931), 707-18;
XXXIII
(1931), 42-55,
127-43.
4
Quoted by Croce,
Estetica
(Bari, 1909), pp.
422-23.
5
Fustel de
Coulanges,
The Ancient
City (Garden City, 1960), p.
13.
6
See M. F.
Sciacca,
II pensiero
italiano nell'eta del
Risorgimento
(Milano, 1963).
7R. G.
Collingwood,
The Idea
of History
(New
York, 1957), p.
71.
8
B. Croce, La
filosofia, p.
251.
9
See Frank E. Manuel,
Shapes of Philosophical History (Stanford,
1965)
and B.
Mazlish,
The Riddle
of History;
The Great
Speculators from
Vico to Freud
(New York, 1966).
10 For a fine
bibliography
on these
matters,
see L.
Gottschalk,
Gener-
alizations in the
Writing of History (Chicago, 1963), pp.
214-47.
11
See F.
Lombardi,
" Vico
uomo,"
a
paper presented
at the
Convegno
di Studi
Vichiani, Vatolla, September
1968.
12
Landogna
in his edition of
Cuoco, Saggio
storico della Rivoluzione
napoletana
del 1799
(Livorno, 1927), p.
xxix.
409
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