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Horst Steinke
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civic life and institutions up to the large-scale level, rather than
on its economic role in the usual sense of the word
270
.
Nevertheless, there are definitely various references or discus-
sions of matters of an economic nature proper in
Scienza nuova
,
although mainly outside this particular Section. They deal with
matters such as
physical needs and desires, wealth
,
commerce, labor and
industriousness, property/land ownership, fiefs, land cultivation and land
rent
271
.
While these complex aspects and relationships cannot be
elucidated here to any satisfactory degree, it can be stated that
such matters of “economics” are discussed in the context(s) of
sociopolitical developments, not the reverse situation of eco-
nomic imperatives being depicted as the driving force behind the
course that societies take
272
. It was only in the second half of the
18
th
century that the study of the economy came into its own
273
,
but, like all major new developments in the history of ideas, it
did not sprout and blossom all of a sudden on entirely unpre-
pared ground
274
. Furthermore, ancient Greece, Rome, and the
classical thinkers and writers served as inspiration for the catego-
ries or concerns through the lens of which to explore early mod-
ern economic realities
275
, classical sources with which Vico was
no less familiar than the new breed of social historians. Although
Vico’s historical “untimeliness” cannot be ruled out as the most
significant factor in the lack of a more systematic treatment of
economic relations over time than he provided in «Poetic Econ-
omy» and in connection with other topics in
Scienza nuova
, a dif-
ferent reason may be more weighty, namely, his strict concern
with unearthing the complex of “forces” that are most “radical”,
most determinative, in both genesis and ontogenesis of human
society. The fact that the economy (in todays’s sense) is missing
from the repertoire of Book II can then be taken as an indication
that Vico did not judge economic matters, all things considered,
as primordial to the same degree as any of those factors that
made it into his
tour d’horizon
276
. And the same implication can
now be stated about art (visual/plastic). As referred to above, he