CHAPTER II

G.B. VICO AND CONTEMPORARY CIVIL WORLD

LU XIAOHE

THE CRITIQUE OF DESCARTES

            Giambattista Vico (1668-1744) lived at the very point of emergence of the modern world. This world has been greatly influenced by the rapid advances in the natural sciences and in technology, which continue till now. Thus, the differences between the contemporary world and Vico’s age are due principally to the sciences and technology having become more powerful and the range of study and life controlled by them having been broadened.

            Vico’s times also witnessed the establishment of the domi-nant paradigm for modern philosophy. This models philosophy upon the natural sciences, especially mathematics. As a result, philosophy has separated itself from the rest of culture as a science of sciences. Descartes’s philosophy which was the source of such philosophy was prevalent in Vico’s lifetime.

            For Descartes, philosophy was yet not separated com-pletely from the sciences. He considered knowledge to be "like a tree whose roots are metaphysics, whose trunk is physics, and whose branches, which issue from this trunk, are all the other sciences."1 Hence, metaphysics, as pure philosophy, is both the source and the foundation of all the sciences, while the other sciences, such as medicine, mechanics and ethics, are the branches of physics as the trunk.

            Descartes began from his first truth acquired by means of his "critical method", and then proceeded step by step to elaborate a whole system of philosophy, using rational deduction as modelled on the procedures of mathematics. He thus reformed philosophy and established a rationalist paradigm, taking clear and distinct ideas as the criterion of truth. These were regarded as the sole aim and principles of philosophy and the sciences.

            This philosophical paradigm was extended to many areas of culture by Descartes’ followers during Vico’s times and deeply influenced the subsequent development of modern Western philosophy. But, in Vico’s view, Descartes’ philosophy is inadequate for a modern civil world. Here I shall not explain in detail the reason for this reaction of Vico, but would point out that though at that time Italy lagged behind France and England in politics, economics and science, as a whole it had a more ancient culture and a higher level of civilization. Living in Naples, which was both a place of traditional culture and a centre of the spread of Descartes’s "new philosophy", made it possible for Vico to draw a balanced assessment.

            His philosophy might be described beginning from his early works, On the Study Method of Our Time (De Nostri Temporis Studiorum Ratione, 1709) and On the Most Ancient Wisdom of the Italians (De Antiquissma Italorum Sapientia, 1710), and proceeding to his masterpiece, New Science (Scienza Nuovo 1725, 1730/1744).

            In On the Study Method of Our Time, Vico, assessing the advan-tages and disadvantages of the classical and modern worlds, affirmed, on the one hand, the achievements of the modern sciences and arts that "have vastly enriched human society".2 On the other hand, he pointed out that Descartes’ new philosophy had many disadvantages, and that its new critical method, if applied as a common instrument of all arts and sciences, "is distinctly harmful"3 to many studies, and espe-cially to social practice.

            In De Antiquissima, Vico, critiquing Descartes’s philosophy, drew upon Italian wisdom as emerging from the sources of the Latin language and literature. His criticism can be summarized as follows:

            1. In order to obtain a pure first truth, Descartes’s critical method required that, in addition to falsehoods, all secondary truths and all probabilities should be banished from the mind. This stifled the growth of common sense; allocated to the first truth a place before, even beyond and above, all bodily images; blunted imagination and memory as talents for the arts; and became a stumbling block to the natural development of the human mind.

            2. Descartes assumed "clear and distinct ideas" as the criterion of truth, but in Vico’s view "the criterion of truth is what we have made" (in Latin, verum "the true" and factum "what is made" are the same).4 Thus, "cogito ergo sum" is not truth, but only certitude of the consciousness of one’s own existence. Since "made" and "truth" are the same, only the one who makes something knows it. Thus, only God knows the natural world, because he made it. Both metaphysics concerning being, and the sciences concerning the parts of nature, are a dissection of nature, belonging to human knowledge. Metaphysics cannot be the source and foundation of the truth of physics and the other sciences, for it is a science not by causes, but of causes. It provides the other sciences only with probabilities--not causes, let alone truth. As for geometry, the most certain of human knowledge which resembles divine knowledge in its operation, this too cannot provide other sciences with demonstration, for it does not contain in itself the creator’s knowledge of those things.

            3. In Latin, causa (cause) and negotium (operation) mean the same. "To prove something by means of causes is to effect it."5 That is to say, the process of proving or demonstration is that of operation and practice. Demonstration cannot be a result of rational deduction, nor can truth in physics or in the other sciences.

            4. While Descartes’ philosophy focused mainly on the natural sciences, it neglected ethics and its relation to social life. It took truth to be the sole aim of all studies, and transferred the method of judg-ment which is proper to knowledge to the sphere of practical wisdom. As a result, those whose concern is only for truth find it difficult to attain the means or even the ends of public life. They engage in public life without sufficient wisdom, and "would no more than spend your labor on going mad rationally."6

            5. The three branches of philosophy, rational, natural and moral, formerly were handed down in a manner suitable to eloquence. Now, not only have these subjects reverted to the physicists, but the springs which make philosophy eloquent, expressive and impassioned have dried up as a result of today’s method. "The rational part in us may be taken captive by a net woven of purely intellectual reasonings, but the passionate side of our nature can never be swayed and overcome unless this is done by more sensuous and materialistic means."7 "Therefore, the soul must be enticed by corporeal images and impelled to love; for once it loves, it is easily taught to believe, once it believes and loves, the fire of passion must be infused into it so as to break its inertia and force it to will."8

            6. As for human truths, their fountainhead lies in the human being, in the operation of various faculties of the human mind. The faculties, whether of sense, imagination or understanding, are "facul-ties of making". We create colors in seeing, flavors in tasting, images in imagining, and even truth in understanding. Mathematics, geometry and mechanics are products of human faculties because in these sciences we make the truths we demonstrate. Of all faculties, ingenuity in connecting disparate and diverse things is the most cre-ative; only by exerting all one’s faculties could one create human truths. Although God’s truths are beyond human, they can know and increase human truths by their creation. Thus, "the idea of the origin and development of institutions as a way of saving humans from dissolution is not far off,"9 that is, it is not far from Vico’s New Science.

            As mentioned above, Vico criticized Descartes’s philosophy with regard to the critical method, the criterion of truth and rational deduction, while defending the rationality of probabilities, common sense, topics, faculties other than reason, practical wisdom, humane studies and the world of experience. However, he did not "award to the one what he would have to take away from the other."10 In his field of vision reason, critical method and the natural sciences were still combined with what he defended, for "the whole is the flower of wisdom".11

THE NEW SCIENCE

            Vico not only pointed out the disadvantages of the modern philosophical paradigm, but also provided a new philosophy called "New Science".

            Vico’s philosophy usually is understood merely as a philosophy of history, different from philosophy of science.12 But in fact, this view is somewhat lopsided as his philosophy is a complete doctrine of human wisdom and the human civil world which can hardly be cate-gorized according to our present division of philosophy. As is well known Marx said there was but one science which contained both natural science and human history. Long before Marx, Vico in his New Science considered natural science to belong to human history and definitely to human wisdom. This thought can be summarized briefly as follows:

            1. The principle of verum-factum was developed into the brilliant truth "that the world of civil society has certainly been made by men, and that its principles are therefore to be found within the modifications of our own human mind."13 Whereas in De Antiquissima, knowledge of human affairs was the most uncertain, in New Science it became the most certain knowledge, even more certain than geometry, because it dealt with various human institutions which "are more real than points, lines, surfaces, and figures."14 These changes did not result from logical inference from principles in human affairs, but from Vico’s discovery of "poetic wisdom" "which has cost us the research of a good twenty years."15 As a result, the civil world is no longer beyond the vi-sion of philosophy or science, and knowledge of it becomes as certain as God’s knowledge.

            2. The view that the faculties of mind are faculties of making is supported by philology. Vico discovered that the founders of nations were "theological poets" who, by creative faculties other than reason--especially by imagination, which Vico called the primary operation of mind16--formed the first human wisdom. With poetic wisdom they founded the first customs, institutions, governments, languages, au-thorities, etc., in a word, the first civil world. So civilization was born of faculties other than reason, not in the esoteric wisdom of great and rare philosophers.

            3. In contrast with Descartes’s tree of philosophy, Vico’s tree of poetic wisdom has poetic metaphysics as its trunk; the poetic sciences and poetic arts of humanity are two branches issuing from meta-physics. This means that the source of poetic metaphysics is the imagination which creates all things poetic, while the operation of the imagination in the various subjects forms the various branches of the arts and sciences. Logic, morals, economics and politics branch out from one limb, while physics and cosmography, astronomy, chro-nology (including mathematics) and geography branch out from the other.17 In other words, in the New Science, there is no gap between the natural sciences and the humanities; all belong to poetic wisdom.

            4. The relationship between wisdom and the esoteric is that what "the poets had first sensed in the way of vulgar wisdom, the philosophers later understood in the way of esoteric wisdom; so the former may be said to have been the sense and the latter the intellect of the human race."18 Moved by such passions as fear, the poets produced imaginative universals. If philosophers abandon imaginative universals and imagination, what they produce with their intellect (that is the "second operation of mind") are intelligible universals. In his view, philosophical or scientific understanding can be gained only when the mind returns to imaginative universals, recovers its own origins in poetic or creative wisdom, and does not stop at esoteric wisdom but combines imagination with intellect, and the poetic with the esoteric. The New Science, being such a product, became philosophical and scientific wisdom, for it was derived not only by combining philosophy and philology, but also by returning to poetic wisdom and to imaginative universals.

            5. In Vico’s New Science, the civil world goes through a course of three ages and their return. In this process, the civil world experiences ups and downs, manifesting many probabilities for change. More noticeably, Vico described two types of "barbarism": one is a "barbarism of sense" which is linked to the pre-historical state; the other is a "barbarism of reflection" or of "intellect" which is linked to Vico’s third age. This latter, said Vico, turned people into beasts; they had "fallen into the custom of each man thinking only of his own private interests" and lived "like wild beasts in a deep solitude of spirit and will." Such barbarism was brought about by overusing the intellect in human affairs. As a result, society and the human spirit were separated from the natural forms of imagination, and common sense was replaced by determinations of the intellect and reflectively devised means of social organization. In Vico’s view, the barbarism of the intellect is more inhuman than the barbarism of sense, for the former enables people to reach the point of reflective malice.19 Donald Philip Verene notes that this "barbarism is a reflection of the barbarism of technological life, the life of procedures of action and social organization."20 In describing the results of this barbarism, Vico also suggested the way to eliminate it, namely, in receiving "this last remedy of providence" one reacquires the faculty of holding the wholeness of human thinking.

            In sum, it may be said that Vico’s New Science constituted a colorful and comprehensive philosophy.

            1. The range of this philosophy is not limited to the work of philosophy as a field of professional inquiry, but concerns human wisdom. It reflects a continuous extension and development of the various faculties of the human mind (not merely of the intellect) in an ever enlarging field of human activities. The branches of human wis-dom issue from metaphysics as their trunk.

            2. The characters and languages it uses are a combination of imaginative universals with intelligible universals, and there is a dia-logue between the two languages rather than a monologue in one language. Philosophical understanding derives from this combination and dialogue.

            3. The characteristic of Vico’s philosophy is "acute", rather than "subtle." Where the subtle may be a single line of logic, the acute is twofold21 attending to both universal truth and contingent exclu-siveness. It is characteristic of his philosophy to consider both sides.

            4. The arts and the ends to which they appeal are the combinations of topics and critique, eloquence and philosophy, belief and truth, prudence and knowledge, rather than truth and critique alone.

            Stephen Toulmin distinguishes three distinct stages of modernity and three corresponding cosmopolis. Toulmin argues that "it is in that very historical contingency" that the cosmopolis of Renaissance humanism, which began in the 15th century, was replaced by the Newtonian cosmopolis which began with Descartes and modern rationalism in the 17th century. In the first stage, practical interest characterized the intellectual community; the model rational enterprise was not mathematics, but law; and rhetoric and logic were not mutually exclusive, but complementary. In the second stage, however, rationality was identified with formal logic, whereas rhetoric was excluded from the domain of rational thought. The gap between nature and man opened, and emotions and desires were extruded from the domain of reason. In view of the philosophical development of the postmodern cosmopolis which began in the mid-20th century, Toulmin suggests that we need to return to:

The wisdom of 16th century humanists, and develop a point of view that combines the abstract rigor and exactitude of 17th century philosophy with a practical concern for human life in its concrete detail. Only so the 17th century’s achievements could be humanized, and so redeemed.22

            There remain many problems to be discussed, but the above description would seem to characterize the three stages. A contingent combination of various historical conditions with the help of 17th century philosophy formed the cosmopolis. Like history, philosophy has many developmental possibilities. We might ask what would have been the development of Western philosophy and even of Western society if the dominant modern philosophy had not followed Des--cartes’s rationalist-foundationalist paradigm, and if Vico’s philosophy had been accepted in his times, for Toulmin’s wish had already found splendid expression in Vico’s philosophy.

IMPLICATIONS FOR CONTEMPORARY CIVIL SOCIETY

            It does not seem that Vico’s philosophy can be taken as our own. This paper is merely an initial discussion; many issues in Vico’s philosophy and its fate in the contemporary world deserve further discussion. But his philosophy provides many ideas which enable us to recognize the contemporary civil world and even to surpass phi-losophy.

            The modern civil world which began in Vico’s age has continued. Elio Gianturco, in the introduction to his translation of Vico’s De Nostri, said that we still "live in a Cartesian world" which "invades and condition our lives."23 In comparison with Vico’s times, our material wealth is more rich than ever, our horizons are broader, sciences and technology are well developed, the fields they touch are more extensive, and the means are more simple and convenient. Especially in the spring tide of modernization, more and more countries have been drawn into this process. Developing countries, such as China, aim at modernization, and face the problem of how to look upon "Descartes’ world". Of course, the ideas of Descartes could not cause the world in which we live, nor could Descartes even imagine it. But this world does possess a mentality first expressed in Descartes’ philosophy.

            The debate between Vico and Descartes continues in our times and in this we may draw inspiration from a number of themes in Vico’s philosophy:

            1. On the barbarism of intellect: "Vico’s new science is a kind of wisdom in an age dominated by the barbarism."24 We live in such an age. Intelligible universals have produced technical universals which become the unifying element of all economic, social and mental activities. Of course, the barbarism of reflection cannot be eliminated by Vico’s new science, but it can help us to become aware of the frag-mentation of contemporary thought and of the deviation of our society.

            2. On overuse of the intellect: we neglect the important role of feelings, imagination, common sense, beliefs, prudence and the tradition of rhetoric in founding and sustaining society. A sound society cannot be built merely by intellect. Poetic wisdom, as a whole, has disappeared in modern philosophy, but elements of it are still indispensable for the contemporary civil world. For instance, in considering ethical issues in business we often rely on rationality to grasp the norms of ethics, but only when rational understanding is combined with common sense, practical wisdom, belief, even passion and imagination, and returns to its sense origins, can the will to follow ethical norms come into being. Vico enables us to recognize the role of these in philosophy.

            3. On the source of philosophy: philosophy usually is thought to express the spirit of the times. Vico not only comprehended the spirit of his age, but also drew upon the ancient wisdom of the Italians and Romans in developing his position which counteracted the weak-nesses of Descartes’ philosophy. He saw that philosophy should take root not merely in one age, but should draw upon the traditions of a culture as its wellspring and develop these traditions in a new age. Philosophy is not a fashion but an inheritance; it is a development of past wisdom by people in the present day.

            After visiting Naples in March, 1787, Goethe said of Vico, "It is a happy thing for a people to have such a patriarch." It is no less impor-tant for us now to remember his words.

Institute of Philosophy

Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences

Shanghai, PRC

NOTES

            1. Philosophical Works of Descartes, trans. Elizabeth Haldane and G.R.T. Ross (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1931), p. 211.

            2. On the Study Methods of Our Time, trans. Elio Gianturco (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1990), p. 11.

            3. Ibid., p. 13.

            4. On the Most Ancient Wisdom of the Italians, trans., L.M. Palmer (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1988), p. 45.

            5. Ibid., p. 64.

            6. On the Study Methods of Our Time, p. 99.

            7. Ibid., p. 38.

            8. Ibid.

            9. On the Most Ancient Wisdom of the Italians, p. 34.

            10. On the Study Methods of Our Time, p. 17.

            11. Ibid, p. 77.

            12. See my thesis: "A Preliminary Study on the Characteristics of Vico’s Philosophy of History", Social Sciences, I (1988), 80-88.

            13. The New Science of Giambattista Vico, trans., Thomas Goddard Bergin and Max Harold Fisch (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Uni-versity Press, 1968), paragraph 331.

            14. Ibid., paragraph 349.

            15. Ibid., paragraph 338.

            16. Ibid., paragraph 699.

            17. Ibid., paragraph 367.

            18. Ibid., paragraph 363.

            19. Ibid., paragraph 1106.

            20. Donald Philip Verene, Vico’s Science of Imagination (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1981), p. 29. I owe much of my view on Vico to Verene’s work.

            21. On the Study Methods of Our Time, p. 24.

            22. Stephen Edelston Toulmin, Cosmopolis, The Hidden Agenda of Modernity (New York: The Free Press, 1990), p. xi.

            23. On the Study Methods of Our Time, p. xxi.

            24. Verene, p. 29.

DISCUSSION

            Three levels of truth are engaged here. One concerns the metaphysical foundations and the basic truth that these reflect of the relation of all to God as the unique source or creator of all. The second concerns the social inventions created by the human imagination in uniting the many human elements. The third is scientific truth con-cerning nature; this consists of hypothesis and possibilities.

            The first two are foundational for human action as they concern the sense of person, love and belief. An important problem is that love as a reflection of belief can be distorted into hatred. It is necessary to note the distortion that is involved here and to focus on ways to correct this perversion of truth and to overcome this as a perversion of love.

            It was noted that Descartes proceeded on the basis of reason, while Hume saw society as proceeding rather on the basis of passion. Upon first consideration, especially under the influence of enligh-tenment rationalism it might seem that passion is the threat and needs to be subjected to reason. However, there are a number of problems in this view. One is the inability of abstract and disengaged reason to reengage life in order to control and direct reason. The second is the danger of abstract reason itself as only one dimension of the human, and hence as dehumanizing when used in isolation: this has been the sad experience of this century. Thirdly, and perhaps most fundamental is the abstractive and analytic character of the thought of both Descartes and Hume which dissociate the various dimensions of the person and thereby destroy their personal character. This is parti-cularly true of Hume’s turn to passion which then sees all in conflictual terms that must, somehow, be held in check by equally vicious passion and ambition.

            Tragically missing here is the metaphysical dimension whereby the creation of all out of love is taken into account. Here the basic truth is not that of vicious passion or holding passion in check by an equally dehumanized reason, but rather God leading his creatures joyfully. This reflects an integration of all levels within the human person, and then of the human person with both nature and God. This has charac-terized the Chinese vision as described by He Xirong in her chapter on Confucian ritual.

            Vico suggested something similar in objecting to the barbarism of reason and pointing to the need to overcome this by reintegrating it into the whole human person, which he sees as essentially integrated into both a culture and a history.