117 / 298
Vico’s Ring
117
implicated in custom», in fact, are precisely what is generated by the forgetful
functor, and are then made part of “philology”.
222
The need of having a means of factoring out invalid or spurious theo-
retical propositions is implied in Pompa’s statement: «Given, however, the
theoretical possibility of an infinite number of such hypotheses, it would al-
ways be possible, with enough ingenuity, to find some hypothesis to support
any given account, no matter how improbable the latter might seem» (Id.,
Vico
and the Presuppositions of Historical Knowledge
, cit., p. 139).
223
M. Scalercio sums up Vico’s objections as follows: «A Grozio rim-
provera di aver concepito un sistema professandone l’efficacia anche in assen-
za di ogni cognizione di Dio, ossia senza alcuna cognizione della divinità
provvedente; a Selden contesta la supposizione che tutte le norme morali
siano state trasmesse dai gentili; a Pufendorf contesta l’assenza del principio di
provvedenza (He reproaches Grotius for having developed a system that pre-
sumes validity even in the absence of any recognition of God, that is, without
any recognition of divine providence; he challenges Selden’s assumption that
all moral norms have come down to us from gentile peoples; in the case of
Pufendorf, he questions the absence of the principle of providence)» (Id.,
La
teologia politica vichiana. La figura della divinazione nella teologia civile della Scienza nuo-
va
, in
Razionalità e modernità in Vico
, cit., pp. 197-217, p. 216).
224
The essential idea behind this methodology, that of factoring out un-
wanted, because inapplicable, information, is also important in other fields; in
mathematics it has been developed into specific (algebraic) techniques for cor-
rectly determining structural “invariants”, inspired by the initial success in al-
gebraic topology. For an elementary example, see I. Stewart,
Visions of Infinity
,
cit., pp. 271-272; in the field of “homology”, the fundamental idea is that of
“cycles”, but there are cycles that are not of right kind (termed “boundaries”)
which must be eliminated from consideration, in short, cycles
modulo
bounda-
ries.
225
More nuanced qualifications are certainly possible, and necessary in
certain contexts, but we will for our purposes stay at the most elemental, or
more literally radical, level. It is a different way of stating F. Tessitore’s insi-
ght: «La ragione di Vico […] non è assoluta e totalizzante […] (Vico’s reason
[…] is not absolute and totalizing […])» (Id.,
Prefazione
, in V. Vitiello,
Vico.
Storia, linguaggio, natura,
cit., pp. 5-10, p. 9).
226
The metaphorical sense is reflected in the Hösle/Jermann translation as
«auf halbem Wege (halfway)».
227
Vico’s problematic is well described in P. Girard,
Le difficulté de la philolo-
gie dans la pensée de Vico,
cit., pp. 131-134.
228
Cfr. U. Galeazzi,
Ermeneutica e storia in Vico
, cit., p. 43.