190 / 298
Horst Steinke
190
has befallen the poems of Homer as the Law of the Twelve Ta-
bles») (§ 904)
404
.
As has been observed earlier, viewed on the broader canvas
of the development of Roman civilization
de longue durée
as a
model for Vico of the development of human civilization in gen-
eral, Homer assumes a larger privotal role and function, namely,
that of being a unique record of the (lost) world of humans, so-
cially, “politically”, of the worldview, the mindset, the language,
and the behavioral pattern(s) prevalent in archaic times. Having
devoted the bulk of
Scienza nuova
to “Poetic Wisdom”, his theory
of origins, Vico now in Book III lays out his methodology by
which he arrived at the reconstruction of primordial culture
405
.
He scrutinizes the language, personalities, manners and customs
depicted in the
Iliad
and
Odyssey
, and realizes that their character-
istics cannot but have originated in the distant past of the Greek
people, going so far as asserting that the
Iliad
account depicted a
time and
milieu
that was very different from the world in the pag-
es of the
Odyssey
406
.
These perceived differences lead him to “dis-
cover” in the
Iliad
the earliest stratum
407
of Greek civilization
408
.
And he was proving that it was possible to find a way of access-
ing the archaic world, the ages of “gods” and “heroes”, which is
an essential condition of possibility of deciphering “Poetic Wis-
dom”.
Rather than engaging in a further (narrative) description of
Vico’s hermeneutical approach in Book III, its contours may be
drawn more distinctly by positing it again in relation to Spinoza’s
thought, all the more so as Spinoza did have his own theory of
interpretation which he propounded explicitly and directly in
TTP
. As was the case in different contexts in previous parts of
this work, our focus on Vico’s thought necessarily places con-
straints on the breadth and depth of Spinoza’s body of thought
being considered.