Vico’s Ring
93
know, to will, and to be able to do»
190
, is «to live in conformity
with eternal reason»
191
, is «naturally social and that this natural
disposition […] was planted in us […] through the […] idea of
equity in law»
192
, the matrix of these fundamental insights is able
to “catch” in its mesh a certain part or level of lived reality which
we might term “gross” of “large-scale”, by its generality. This is
why Vico could say immediately following the preceding state-
ment: «In pursuit of this equity human beings joined together in
communities and founded commonwealths»
193
. In other words,
from human nature, properly understood as inherently sociable,
it could be explained why humans formed communities. And the
God-given innate sense of justice can also more-or-less unmedi-
atedly be related to the rule of law
194
. To this degree the
ideal
can
be said to be at the root of the
factua
195
.
However, this is essen-
tially the limit to which the
ideas
can take us; when it comes to
the “finer”, more detailed forms of social organization, govern-
ance, positive legislation, synchronically, and furthermore, dia-
chronically, the dynamics of their development over time, which
is actually one of Vico’s main preoccupations, the
ideal
, strictly
understood as a “class” by itself
196
, has reached its level of com-
petence. In the realm of ideas, of concepts belonging to “philos-
ophy”, one would be mistaken in attempting to look for insights
regarding the universal practice of religion, burial of the dead,
marriage or patriarchal, aristocratic/democratic, monarchic
forms of governance, or even the “ages” of the “gods”, “he-
roes”, and “men”
197
.
5.2
The mediating role of “philology”
Vico expressed this state of affairs by saying that «the philos-
ophers failed by half (
per metà
) in not giving certainty to their rea-
sonings by appeal to the authority of the philologians» (Axiom
X, § 140)
198
. This peremptory statement can be pressed into ser-
vice of our thesis at two levels. The first level is Vico’s insistence
on the epistemic insufficiency of “philosophy”, on the one hand,