54 / 298
Horst Steinke
54
The insertion of this Bodin-related material at this particular place in the
work is also noteworthy in view of the fact that a previous point in the work
might be considered as presenting a natural opportunity for doing so, namely
§ 663, that asserts that «Jean Bodin […] too falls into the common vulgar er-
ror […] that monarchies came first […]». The 1730 edition reads the same
way, see G. Vico,
La Scienza nuova. Le tre edizioni
, cit., p. 623.
57
Pompa calls the father the «quasi-monarchical leader of a primitive tribe
or “family”» (Id.,
Vico
:
A Study of the “New Science
”, cit., p. 26), since patriar-
chies and monarchies have in common the rule by a single individual, at least
nominally.
58
In the 1730 edition, it is Axiom (“Degnità”) LXXII (not LXXVI, as in
1744), see G. Vico,
La Scienza nuova. Le tre edizioni,
cit., p.
466.
59
As B. A. Haddock stated: «Bodin’s mistake is conceptual rather than
empirical. Given the nature of the first men, it is inconceivable “that the fami-
ly fathers […] would have allowed themselves” to submit to the inequality in-
herent in a monarchical arrangement» (Id.,
Vico and the Methodology of the History
of Ideas
, in
Vico: Past and Present
, ed. by G. Tagliacozzo, Atlantic Highlands,
Humanities Press, 1981, pp. 227-239, p. 237). This specific issue needs to be
kept separate from other aspects of Bodin’s and Vico’s political philosophies,
and their possible affinities, such as their views of “hybrid” forms of states.
See R. Ruggiero,
Nova Scientia Tentatur,
cit., p. 63; N. Bobbio,
Vico e la teoria
delle forme di governo
, in «BCSV», VIII, 1978, pp. 5-27; A. Del Prete,
Vico et
Bodin
, in «Historia philosophica», 1, 2003, pp. 43-53 (online at
Portale Vico
,
< www.giambattistavico.it>, under tab
Biblioteca digitale
); S. Caramella,
Vico,
Tacitus, and Reason of State,
cit., p. 31; D. R. Kelley
, Vico’s Road: From Philology to
Jurisprudence and Back
, cit., pp. 15-29, p. 24;
ibid.
, footnote 30, includes refer-
ences to further studies on Vico and Bodin. Vico’s debt to Bodin was recog-
nized even earlier, see Flint,
Vico
, cit., p. 186 (published 1884).
60
G. Vico,
La Scienza nuova. Le tre edizioni
, cit., p. 716 (1730 edition), p.
1194 (1744 edition).
61
«No less important, though less obvious, was Vico’s reliance upon the
hermeneutics developed within the legal tradition»: D. R. Kelley,
Vico’s Road
,
cit., p. 20. Kelley also spoke of «geometrical affectations» of Vico’s thought
(
ibid.
, p. 27).
62
For our purposes, there does not seem to be a need to go as far back as
Nicolas of Cusa, and his ground-breaking philosophy of mathematics, which
in any case Vico likely had not read. (V. Hösle,
God as Reason: Essays in Philo-
sophical Theology,
Notre Dame, Notre Dame University Press, 2013, p. 271; see
also G. Santinello,
Cusano e Vico: A proposito di una tesi di K. O. Apel
, in «BCSV»,
VII (1977), pp. 141-150, p. 143).