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Vico’s Ring
15
Vico’s grouping of five thinkers (Epicurus, Macchiavelli, Hobbes, Spinoza,
Bayle), on the one hand, and three (Hobbes, Spinoza, Bayle), on the other
hand, is still of interest: «Le triadi e i quintetti sono funzionali nel discorso vi-
chiano perchè rappresentano uno schema concettuale che permette di mettere
insieme sotto un unico concetto pensieri differenti, anche se in qualche misura
appartenenti alla medesima scuola o tendenza (The triads and quintets serve a
function in the Vichian discourse since they constitute a conceptual scheme
that allows bringing together under a single concept thinking that differs, even
if it belongs in some sense to the same school or tendency)» (Id.,
La “fantasia
che è l’occhio del ingegno”
, cit., p. 96).
11
Likely it would take a book-length monograph to explore and argue the
thesis in full; the goal at present is more modest, consisting of an attempt to
raise merely the plausibility of a particular literary form of
Scienza nuova
.