111 / 298
Vico’s Ring
111
cist/positivist nor idealist/wholly a priori. While he does not expressly associ-
ate or identify it with the sphere of Vichian “philology”, much of what is elu-
cidated quite clearly relates to it and deals with it, thus preserving the distinc-
tion Vico himself drew, and that we have insisted on. As noted above, the is-
sue of seeing Vico as an empiricist or rationalist/idealist was also raised by
Hösle who takes the idealist position (Id.,
Einleitung
, cit., p. CXIV, footnote
146).
198
For certain philosophers that are in the background, see W. H. Walsh,
The Logical Status of Vico’s Ideal Eternal History
, cit., p. 150. The original expres-
sion «
per metà
» is from
La Scienza nuova. Le tre edizioni
, cit., p. 860.
199
A statement closer to the spirit of Axiom X can be found in the pro-
logue of
De uno
, Book II (
On the Constancy of the Jurisprudent
): «[…] we will not
allow philology to be separated from philosophy […]. Rather we will let phi-
losophy follow as a necessary consequence from philology». Still, this mild-
mannered programmatic statement does not rise to the level of adamance on
the place of “philology” negatively expressed in
Scienza nuova
.
200
The role that
mediation
plays in Vico’s systematic thought as indispensa-
ble linkage, intermediate agency, interposition, in various contexts, has been
noted by Vico students, for example by A. Damiani,
Poesía y política en Giambat-
tista Vico,
in
Arte y poder
, Buenos Aires, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Facultad
de Filosofía y Letras, 1993, pp. 392-395, p. 395: «El hombre puede conocer lo
que él mismo ha hecho: el mundo civil, las instituciones sociales, el estado.
Pero para ello, nos dice Vico, no debemos aplicar directamente nuestra razón
sobre la praxis […] («Man is able to know what he has made himself: the civic
world, the social institutions, the state. But to do so, Vico tells us, we should
not apply our reason directly to actual praxis)»; D. Di Cesare,
Parola, logos,
dabar: Linguaggio e verità nella filosofia di Vico
, in «BCSV», XXII-XXIII (1992-
1993), pp. 251-287, p. 262: «Nell’introdurre qui il linguaggio come termine di
mediazione tra
verum
e
factum,
non si pretende in nessun modo di esaurire il
significato di questo principio (By introducing here language as mediating
term between
verum
and
factum,
it is by no means intended to exhaust the
meaning of this principle)»; G. Cacciatore,
Un’idea moderna di certezza
, cit., p.
189: «il ruolo dell’interpretazione coinvolge […] sopratutto quello di una pos-
sibilità di mediazione, affidata appunto all parola, tra soggetto e mondo (the
role of interpretation involves […] above all [the level] of the possibility of
mediation, entrusted precisely to language, between subject and world)».
201
Without the interposition of “philology” between “philosophy” and
historical reality, the place of “philosophy” in Vico has been thought to be
highly problematic: «What I am arguing is that there is a certain incoherence
in Vico’s conception of the imaginative universal. For Vico requires of it that,