Elio Gianturco said, of De mente heroica (On the Heroic Mind) “it is one of the most inspired ‘invitations to learning’ ever penned. . . . The eros of learning has seldom been expressed in more electrifying terms.”Vico advocates the humanist ideal that the goal of education is the realization of the natural bond between eloquence and wisdom. The educated person has the goal of becoming “wisdom speaking” (la sapienza che parla). The aim of the individual in any system of (...) education should be to grasp all the branches of knowledge in their connections to each other, to see thought as forming a whole.On Vico’s view, the individual should acquire the power of wisdom speaking for the common good. The ideal to instill in students is a sense of heroic mind. This form of heroism is the cultivation of the virtues to seek not just honor and gain but to act for the social good. These are ancient ideals that carry with them their own power. On Vico’s view, they require constant and eloquent restatement by the teacher and should occupy a central place in the educational institution. (shrink)

This discussion is an analysis of Vico’s account of the imaginative universals in the 1744 edition of the New Science in regard to the origin of number. The origin of number is a difficult problem for Vico because numbers are discursive concepts, yet Vico wants to fi nd their origin in mythical thought. Vico finds the origin of numbers in the power struggle between the heroes and the plebeians. The imaginative universal Mercury is the heroic act of granting bonitary ownership (...) to the plebeians. However, Mercury is also the imaginative universal of marking heroic ownership. Number originates from the heroes emphasizing ownership by marking territory more than once. This explains several peculiar passages in the New Science, including Vico’s claims about the three frogs of France (NS par. 535). (shrink)

This article argues that Vico’s theory of history should be construed as an ontological constructionist account as opposed to its usual realist interpretation. In support of this interpretation I draw upon two important concepts issuing from the body of the Scienza nuova: the notion of ‘‘storia’’ and the verum ipsum factum principle. Both concepts are not only consistent with an ontological constructionist interpretation of Vico’s theory of history but function as powerful explanatory devices in the context of such an interpretation. (...) I show the advantage this interpretation holds for overcoming one of the main charges brought against the Scienza nuova when it is interpreted as presenting a realist conception of history. In highlighting the possibility and, indeed, textual advantages of construing Vico’s theory of history as an ontological constructionist account I claim that Vico may have anticipated the constructionist tradition by some 200 years and may be considered as the founder of constructionism in the philosophy of history. (shrink)

A great virtue of this book is its fusion of Croce's unique brand of idealism and aesthetic philosophy with Vico's epistemological, ethical, and historical ...

Introduction to Giambattista Vico: The Anglo-American perspective Marcel Danesi. Giambattista Vico (-) In, the Neapolitan rhetorician and philosopher, ...

With the celebrated frontispiece to the New Science (1744) and through an immediate comparison of this image to the ancient moral fable inscribed in the Tablet of Cebes the Theban, Vico ingeniously employs a then well-known common topic and a conventional emblematic device to inaugurate his topics-based philosophy. A topical knowledge of the human cannot, for Vico, be seized by precept only; it must be undergone as an active and imaginative recovery of the topics through memory. In times of need, (...) topical memory is consequential for civil wisdom and historical consciousness. An aptitude for the practic of topics is manifest in the manmade figurations of fable and poetry and in the requisite and recollective resynthesis of them. By modeling, exemplifying, explaining, and soliciting this aptitude for topical knowledge, Vico provides a multifold teaching on the acquisition of civil wisdom. (shrink)

We examine significant parallels between Surrealist art theory and Vico’s understanding of primitive metaphor, centering on a 1933 article on Vico by the Czech Surrealist Zdenko Reich, who recognized that Vico’s understanding of primitive thought shared notable similarities with the Surrealists’ intent to effect an epistemological revolution by re-establishing poetic thought as the central mode of human understanding. The Surrealists sought to undermine the rationalist assumptions of Western philosophy and revive the “poetic ideas of the first men” through the use (...) of disjunctive juxtaposition, a technique Reich identified with Vichian primitive metaphor. Also like Vico, Reich and the Surrealists stressed the concrete and sensory foundations of thought as revealed in language, and saw the human body as the primary mediating vehicle of poetic thought. In this regard the Surrealists can be seen as effecting a complete embrace of Vico’s concept of metaphor in their attempt to re-organize reality on poetic terms. (shrink)