Horst Steinke
122
due movimenti – dall’alto verso il basso, e dal basso verso l’alto – sono e van-
no letti come un unico e medesimo movimento. […] Il movimento dal basso
è sì il movimento dal certo al vero, dall’
auctoritas
alla
ratio
, dall’equità civile alla
naturale, ma visto alla luce dello sguardo divino, dell’
ordo rerum
(It has been
rightly observed that the frontispiece is to be “read” by traversing it not only
from the top to the bottom, but also in the opposite direction from the bot-
tom to the top, from the
ingens sylva
inhabitated by the
gegeneîs
, from the
Terrae
filii
to Metaphysics, whose eye looks at the divine triangle. But more needs to
be said: the two movements – from the top to the bottom, and from the bot-
tom to the top – are and need to be read as a single and same movement. […]
The movement from the bottom is then the movement from the certain to
the true, from
auctoritas
to
ratio
, from civic equity to natural equity, but seen in
the light of the divine gaze, of the
ordo rerum
)» (Id.,
Vico. Storia, linguaggio, natu-
ra
, cit., p. 26, see also p. 74). In terms of our thesis, with its trichotomous
framework, “philosophy” is embodied in the figure of Metaphysics, “philolo-
gy” in the figure of Homer, and the world of humans in the altar, its appurte-
nances, as well as the articles placed around the altar on the ground; the
movement from the top to the bottom (“top-down”) can be interpreted as
analogous to the (semi)contravariant functors, the movement from the bot-
tom to the top (“bottom-up”), to the forgetful functors.
241
As already mentioned above, Hösle views Vico as a clear rationalist
(Id.,
Einleitung
, cit., p. CXIV, footnote 146), and concludes that Vico did not
possess an adequate method of providing ultimate grounds for his rationalisti-
cally conceived theory («über keine ausreichende Methode verfügt, um seine
rationalistisch konzipierte Theorie zu begründen»). However, Hösle, in the
context of Croce’s Vico interpretation, also implicitly acknowledged a trichot-
omy: «Denn dies ist gerade Vicos eigenste Pointe, dass
Philosophie, Sozialwissen-
schaft
und
Historie
nicht zu trennen sind und dass nur aus ihrer Verbindung
eine neue Wissenscnaft hervorgehen kann (For it is precisely Vico’s unique
key claim that
philosopy, social sciences,
and
history
cannot be separated, and that a
new science can only arise out of their combination)» (
ibid.
, p. CIX; italics
added).
A similarly nuanced epistemology is evident in N. Badaloni. On the one
hand, there is clear emphasis on duality, as in the title
Ideality and Factuality in
Vico’s Thought
,
trans. by H. V. White, in
Giambattista Vico: An International Sym-
posium
, cit., pp. 391-400; however, a trichotomous conception is implied by
statements as: «The science of history [“philology”] is the human recognition
of the possible relations between the
ideal
[“philosophy”] and the
fact
» (p. 398;
italics original), and: «[…] truth [“philosophy”] is strictly bound to fact
through the mediation of the utilities [“philology”]» (p. 399).