84 / 298
Horst Steinke
84
159
Pace
R. Miner who stated: «“Things” [in the real historical world] for
Vico are ultimately epiphenomena, the effects of divine mind and its human
participation» (Id.,
Vico: Genealogist of Modernity
, Notre Dame, University of
Notre Dame Press, 2002, p. 90).
160
Interestingly, Cristofolini also sees a threefold structure in Vico’s
methodology: «Al principio di tutto vi è il nesso non duplice (tra idee e cose),
ma triplice, tra cose, idee e parole, e l’idea di una filologia, già dichiarata nel
De
Constantia
, come scienza delle parole che è scienza di idea e dunque di cose»
(At the very beginning there is not a twofold (between ideas and institutions)
but threefold nexus, between institutions (
cose
), ideas, and language (
parole
),
and the concept of a philology, already made clear in
De Constantia
, as the sci-
ence of language which is a science of the ideas and thus of institutions (
cose
)»
(Id.,
La
Scienza nuova
di Vico
, cit., p. 81). Since the thesis about the relationship
among the triple has not yet been developed, we will here not comment fur-
ther on Cristofolini’s exposition, except noting possible agreement on the cor-
respondence of
institutions/socio-political world
,
ideas/“philosophy
”, and
lan-
guage/“philology”.
On the threefold complex of “ideas”, “words”, and “things”,
see also V. Hösle,
Einleitung
, cit., p. CXV, footnote 148; S. Caianiello,
Filologia
ed epoca in Vico
, cit., p. 150, footnote 35, commented: «si ha l’impressione che
si stabilisca tra i tre ordini un rapporto transitivo di sincronia (it gives the im-
pression that a transitive, synchronous relationship is established between the
three orders)».
It should be added that the translation above of «
cose
» by «institutions», for
the sake of brevity, is less than satisfactory; the Vichian term entails what E.
Nuzzo called «la totalità dei fenomeni que vanno a costituire le formazioni
socioculturali umane (the totality of phenomena that make up the forms of
human societies and cultures)» (Id.,
I carattteri dei popoli nella nuova scienza delle
nazioni di Vico
, cit., p. 173).
161
The proposed trichotomy might seem to be at odds with statements
that have a clearly “dualistic” tenor, such as § 163 (appended to Axiom XXII;
see footnote 152 above), which only speaks of seeing «in fact (
in fatti
) this
world of nations», on the one hand, and having «studied [it] in idea (
in idea
)»,
on the other hand. The “factual” in this instance thus does not make a distinc-
tion between “theory” and underlying “data”, but instead conflates them. Ra-
ther than necessarily conflicting, however, effectively this amounts to an im-
position of additional structure on the initial underlying trichotomous
“scheme”. This additional structure results from setting up an equivalence re-
lation with respect to “philology”, as a discipline, and the actual historical
world. Equivalence does not mean equality, but only certain commonality at
the chosen level of abstraction while ignoring other distinctions. Since it re-