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Vico’s Ring
73
Book II. As quoted above, Axiom X of
Scienza nuova
includes in
“philology” first of all everything that is language-related, but
secondly also, non-linguistic “material”, namely the full sweep of
history and culture of individual population groups, on the one
hand, and the relations and interactions between them, both pos-
itive (through travel and commerce) and negative (through war,
requiring peace treaties to end). The introductory description in
Philology
is more expansive but agrees with the later
Scienza nuova
on radically redefining philology as a discipline
141
(Chapter 1, §§
1-2).
This sweeping redefinition of the scope of philology, howev-
er, is just one aspect of Vico’s project. Another key aspect is ex-
pressed in the title of the first chapter, “
Nova scientia tentatur
(
A
New Science is Assayed
)”
142
. From a certain point of view, Vico’s
“philology” can be considered an «encyclopedic and ordering
science»
143
. The encyclopedic scope is evident from Vico’s enu-
meration in Chapter 1, § 2: «Thus philologists follow their calling
when they write commentaries on commonwealths, the customs,
laws, institutions, branches of learning, and artifacts of nations
and peoples. They attend with great care to epigraphy, numis-
matics, and chronology». At the same time,
Philology
opens a win-
dow on the way in which Vico transforms philology – even in its
already more generalized practice of his day – into a “science”
that is able to hold its own even against modern demands of
“scientificity”, when he concludes the chapter with the pro-
grammatic statement: «Therefore, we have decided in this book
to discuss the
principles
of humanity» (Chapter 1, § 27; italics add-
ed). In terms of scope of inquiry, Vico may not be much differ-
ent or more path-breaking than his contemporaneous research-
ers, but his real focus and interest is in explaining these cultural
and historical phenomena by means of underlying, and generally
valid,
«principles». In other words, he promises a
theory
of human
society, with priority given to the development of the rule of law,
and forms of governance as determining the conditions for all