118 / 298
Horst Steinke
118
229
Ibid.
, p. 179
230
The following comments by other Vico readers are pertinent here:
«Deja así un suplemento de realidad que no puede reducirse a su aprehensión
por el entendimiento (It [§ 349] leaves a remainder of reality that cannot be
reduced to its being apprehended by the intellect)» (O. Remaud,
Vico lector de
Espinosa
, cit., p. 203); «[…] il persistere nel certo vichiano di un elemento em-
pirico non metabolizzabile nella trasparenza ultima della ragione, e per questo
destinato a sussistere in un ordine distinto (the persisting of an empirical ele-
ment in the Vichian certain that is not fully dissolvable in the ultimate clarity
of reason, and therefore destined to live on in a different sphere)» (S. Caianiel-
lo,
Filologia ed epoca in Vico
, cit., p. 154).
231
In §§ 341, 347, the relative markedness of
human
is more pronounced in
the original text, see G. Vico,
La Scienza Nuova. Le tre edizioni
, cit., pp. 894-895,
902-903.
232
It begs the question how Vico arrived at this particular threefold de-
termination which is introduced quite abruptly in § 333; after all, there are a
myriad «human customs», as evidenced by cultural anthropology
–
synchroni-
cally, diachronically
–
that must come under purview, and surely did enter his
reflection. For example. T. Brennan points out, «[i]n many cultures, after all,
people do not bury their dead. They set them afloat on rafts, cremate them,
leave them to rest atop ritual platforms, or place them in sacred chambers
open to the sky to be devoured by birds». It takes the principle of charity to
conclude that «his point is not literal burial but the ritual commemoration of
mortal remains» (Id.,
Borrowed Light
, vol. I:
Vico, Hegel and the Colonies
, Stanford,
California, Stanford University Press, 2014, p. 34). An example of alternative
proposals of universal anthropology is cited by J. Mali – birth, death, sexual
relations – in Id.,
The Rehabilitation of Myth: Vico’s New Science
, Cambridge-New
York , Cambridge University Press, 1992, p. 57. Mali plays down the im-
portance of such disagreements, in favor of the need of assessing Vico’s an-
thropology at a higer level: «What is really novel and important in Vico’s theo-
ry of the “principles of humanity”, then, is not its actual choice of these three
particular institutions […]; it is rather the very conception of how “under-
standing in principle” is possible in and indispensable to the human sciences»
(
ibid.
, p. 56). However, this approach does not seem to take into consideration
the possibility that the three specific constants of civilization that Vico fea-
tured so prominently might be integrally related to the nature and substance
of his “philosophy” and “philology”, and thus structurally necessary in the
overall conceptual framework.
It would, of course, have been informative if Vico had made reference to
some other putative cultural commonalities, along with his reasons for ulti-