137 / 298
Vico’s Ring
137
(1680-1734), Daniel Bernoulli (1700-1782). Also to be included is Geminiano
Montanari (1633-1687) and his main work
Della moneta: trattato mercantile
(1683-
1684) (
ibid.
, pp. 254-255). Hutchison also comments that «[…] during the cen-
tury and a half before our period opened (
c
. 1500-1650) probably more out-
standing works on political economy came from Italian writers than from
those of any other country» (
ibid.
, p. 254; see also pp. 18-20). Perhaps it is also
relevant to call attention to writers on economic matters in the early 1700’s in,
or concerning, the Naples area, including C. A. Broggia (1698-1767), P. Con-
tegna (1670-1745), S. Di Stefano (1665-1737), B. Intieri (1678-1757), A. Ric-
cardi (1660-1726), F. Valignani (18
th
century) (see
Repertorio bio-bibliografico degli
scrittori di economia in Campania. Prima parte (dal 1594 al 1861)
, ed. by L. Costabi-
le and R. Patalano, Naples, La Città del Sole, 2000, pp. 85-89, 164-165, 255-
257, 374-375, 475-477, 547).
275
See N. Morley,
Political Economy and Classical Antiquity
, in «Journal of the
History of Ideas», 59, 1988, 1, pp. 95-114. For instance, the Greek “age of re-
flection/intellectualism” of the (long) fourth century B. C., about Vico has
much to say, was seemingly also an age of a highly developed economic sys-
tem. See E. E. Cohen,
Athenian Economy and Society: A Banking Perspective
,
Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1992.
276
One of the longest sections of Book II is on “Poetic Logic”, referring
to creative use of language, as Vico defines it in § 401: «“Logic” comes from
logos,
whose first and proper meaning was […] speech». In this connection, the
observation of F. Rossi-Landi on priorities is apropos: «Invero, una produzio-
ne di artefatti materiali senza la concomitante produzione di artefatti linguisti-
ci, e viceversa, non è nemmeno
pensabile.
L’uomo non avrebbe potuto lavorare
ad alcun oggetto se non comunicando con altri lavoratori, e sia pure con lin-
gue rudimentali, all’inizio ai confini del gestire (Indeed, producing material
artefacts without the concomitant production of linguistic artefacts, and vice
versa, is not even
thinkable
. Man could not have worked on any object unless
communicating with other workers, even if only with rudimentary language,
limited to gestures in the beginning)» (Id.,
Metodica filosofica e scienza dei segni.
Nuovi saggi sul linguaggio e l’ideologia
, Milan, Bompiani, 1985, p. 48). The empha-
sis on language and rhetoric as more fundamental or constitutive than strictly
economic interests and activities is echoed by modern economic historians,
such as D. N. McCloskey – with particular attention to the early modern peri-
od – in
Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Can’t Explain The Modern World
, Chica-
go-London, University of Chicago Press, 2010, pp. 20-30.
277
There are thus two separate issues involved in placing art and econom-
ics in Vico’s thought in
Scienza nuova
. The first, and primary, issue is their role
or function in the originary sphere, and our argument has been that Vico did