274 / 298
Horst Steinke
274
ful: J. Mali,
The Rehabilitation of Myth
, cit.; D. Bidney,
Vico’s New Science of Myth
,
in
Giambattista Vico: An International Symposium
, cit., pp. 259-277; A. J. Grant,
Vico and Bultmann on Myth
, cit. Caponigri described the Enlightenment view of
“myth” against which Vico’s re-evaluation can be set: «Myths could be con-
strued, from the illuminist point of view, only as pure phantasies, as disguised
rational structures or, most sinisterly of all, as deceptive devices meant to be-
guile the ignorant […]» (Id.,
Philosophy and Philology
, cit., p. 95); similarly, Mali:
«Myths, legends, folk-tales were considered worthless as “historical evidence”,
and therefore useless to science», and so characterizes Vico’s proposition as «a
polemical stance» (Id.,
The Rehabilitation of Myth
, cit., pp. 205, 220).
552
Bidney commented: «In a prereflective age, such as the age of the gods
and the age of the heroes, poets had not yet learned to fabricate deliberate,
systematic fictions and falsehoods, and it may therefore be assumed that they
spoke theological and historical truths» (Id.,
Vico’s New Science of Myth,
cit., p.
269). Vico cites the
Iliad
as going back to the time «when Greece was young
and consequently seething with sublime passion», and the
Odyssey
as later,
«when the spirits of Greece had been somewhat cooled by reflection, which is
the mother of prudence» (§ 879). And in general, Vico asserts, «[s]uch crude,
co[a]rse, wild, savage, volatile, unreasonable, or unreasonably obstinate, frivo-
lous, and foolish customs […], can pertain only to men […] in the weakness
of their minds, […] in the vigor of their imagination, and […] in the turbu-
lence of their passions […]» (§ 787). We therefore concur with G. Cacciatore:
«Diese [“philosophischen” und “philologischen”] Beweise zeigen zum Bei-
spiel, daß die Mythen keine verzerrten Bilder von der Wirklichkeit darstellen
[…] (These [“philosophical” and “philological”] desiderata demonstrate, for
example, that the myths do not constitute distorted pictures of reality […])»
(Id.,
Die Hermeneutik Vicos zwischen Philosophie und Philologie
, in
Die Hermeneutik
im Zeitalter der Aufklärung
, ed. by M. Beetz and G. Cacciatore, Cologne-
Weimar-Vienna, Böhlau Verlag, 2000, pp. 311-330, p. 329).
553
Vico made this point, of course, already at the beginning of
Scienza
nuova
, in his explanation of the frontispiece: «We find that the principle of
these origins both of languages and of letters lies in the fact that the first gen-
tile peoples, by their demonstrated necessity of nature, were poets who spoke
in poetic characters. This discovery […] is the master key of this Science […]»
(§ 34). Valagussa sees Vico’s approach as deliberately polemical vis-à-vis Spi-
noza’s «geometric method» of
Ethics
(Id.,
Vico. Gesto e poesia
, cit., p. 112).
554
In Mazzotta’s view, «[…] a context presupposes the belief in an articu-
lated totality, in a common field wherein individual entities acquire meaning in
terms of a surrounding whole. Such is the view of the Neoplatonists or mon-
ists, such as Bruno and Spinoza, who assume the whole reality is made of in-