Abstract
Rejecting the early modern rationalist and empiricist approaches to knowledge, Giambattista Vico develops a rhetorical criticism of epistemology. This criticism is directed against any reduction of argumentation to syllogistic methods as well as against the reduction of science to natural science. In contrast to Descartes and Hobbes, who wanted to constrain the use of language to calculating with clearly defined signs, Vico stresses the rhetorical potential of language to create horizons of meaning. At the same time he shows that the creative power of language is the driving force behind human history. Vico’s philosophy of language is likewise a philosophy of history. He demonstrates how history relies on the use of language, and to what extent the dynamics of history depends on the performative forces of speech.
