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Horst Steinke
14
Spinoza, and Vico
, in
Giambattista Vico’s Science of Humanity,
ed. by G. Tagliacoz-
zo and D. Ph. Verene, Baltimore-London, Johns Hopkins University Press,
1976, pp. 187-212; G. Bedani,
Vico Revisited: Orthodoxy, Naturalism and Science in
the “Scienza nuova
”, Oxford-Hamburg-Munich, Berg, 1989, p. 88; A. Tucker,
Platone e Vico. Una reinterpretazione platonica di Vico
, tr. it. di D. Rotoli, in «Bollet-
tino del Centro di Studi Vichiani»
(henceforth referred to as «BCSV»), XXIV-
XXV, 1994-1995, pp. 97-115 (online at
Portale Vico
,
<www.giambattistavico.it>,
under tab
Riviste
);
E. Nuzzo,
I caratteri dei popoli nella nuova scienza delle nazioni di
Vico. Tra causalità sacra, causalità storica, causalità naturale,
in
Razionalità e modernità
in Vico
, cit., pp. 129-178, pp. 141-144; O. Remaud,
Vico lector de Espinosa (Sobre
la reprensión de la Etica, II, 7 en la Scienza nuova [1744], § 238)
, trans. by M. F.
Pérez-Alors and J. A. Martin-Casanova, in «CsV»,
7-8, 1997, pp. 191-206; S.
Otto,
Vico versus Spinoza. Zwei Typen von Metaphysik vor dem Problem “zeitlicher
Kontingenz”
, in
Pensar para un nuevo siglo
, vol. II, cit., pp. 497-512; V. Vitiello,
Vico nel suo tempo
, saggio introduttivo in G. Vico,
La Scienza nuova. Le tre edizioni
del 1725, 1730 e 1744
, ed. by M. Sanna and V. Vitiello, Milan, Bompiani, 2012-
2013, pp. V-CLXXII, pp. LIX-CXVIII.
8
A. R. Caponigri,
Time and Idea: The Theory of History in Giambattista Vico,
Notre Dame, Indiana-London, University of Notre Dame Press, 1953, p. 191.
9
As P. Cristofolini wrote that «la questione è stata a un certo punto posta
da Vico come fondamentale, e dunque collocata al centro dell’opera (the que-
stion [of Homer] is posed by Vico at a certain point as fundamental and there-
fore placed in the middle of the work)» (Id.,
La Scienza nuova
di Vico: introduzio-
ne alla lettura
, Rome, La Nuova Italia Scientifica, 1995, p. 135).
10
Since it is the third out of five books, Mazzotta calls it «literally the nu-
merical centerpiece» (Id.,
The New Map of the World,
cit., p.
140). While our es-
say examines
Scienza nuova
mainly from the perspective of classical
literary tech-
nique
, to put it mundanely, A. Fletcher has called attention to a different
source of inspiration – not that these two aspects were mutually exclusive – ,
namely ancient «numerology». He observed: «Thus, while the infrastructure of
the
New Science
is based on an ordering of numerous “sets” or “cells” of triadic
cultural development, the whole Book is given its “external” form by the
number 5. […] The pentad is often modulated, in number symbolism, into
what might be called “the beginnings of a circle” – […] the pentad is con-
ceived as “perfectly” closing off an extended action. Vico achieves this same
“five-act” closure by dividing his 1744
New Science
into a pentad of triads, all
of which reflect or interact with various initial binary oppositions» (Id.,
On the
Syncretic Allegory of the
New Science, in «NVS», 4, 1986, pp. 25-42, p. 32). See
also A. Battistini,
On the Encyclopedic Structure of the New Science
, cit., p. 21. While
the context is not directly related to the present subject, Sanna’s comment on