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Vico’s Ring
95
As the above figure illustrates, this is not the only forgetful
functor that is involved; the other functor of this type,
from
the
actual world of humans
to
“philology”, implies that any theoreti-
cal constructs/interpretations/concepts have a source outside, in
the real world, and have entered the theoretical realm through a
complex transformative process. Vico pointed to this ultimate
ground of all philosophical reflection in Axiom LXIV (§ 238):
«The order of ideas must follow the order of institutions»
206
. The
human “institutions” (in the sense of Vico’s all-inclusive term
«
cose»
) make up the very first sphere in our trichotomous scheme,
and while, for heuristic reasons, the emphasis thus far – hopeful-
ly without doing violence to Vico’s own intent – has been on the
topos of “philology”, equal accentuation and space must be ac-
corded the “category” of the world of humans, and whose au-
tonomous status must be preserved epistemologically
207
. As stat-
ed before, epistemic access for “philosophical” reflection to the
sphere of actual human history is never direct but mediated by a
theoretical, conceptual framework. So, it is actually the “philo-
logical” discipline that avails itself of a forgetful functor to make
sense, however tentatively, of the confusing and fragmentary
trove of phenomena in the real world, and information about it.
This is indeed the subject and thrust of
Philology
, forming the
second part of Book II of
De uno
, featuring the propaedeutic, as
well as programmatic, subtitle “
Nova scientia tentatur”
. In view of
the transitivity of these two functors, Axiom LXIV, seemingly
connecting the sphere of “philosophy” and actual historical reali-
ty in a direct manner, more than anything else highlights the true
starting point of the cognitive enterprise
208
. As Vico declared in §
368 (Book II, Chapter II): «Thus our Science come to be at once
a history of the ideas, the customs, and the deeds of mankind.
From these three we shall derive the principles of the history of
human nature […]»
209
. As always, the field of juridical notions (in
particular Roman law in historical perspective) is paradigmatic in
Vico’s epistemology. It contains and involves all three spheres