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Horst Steinke
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true in the laws (Il
Vero delle Leggi
) is a certain light and splendor
with which natural reason (la
Ragion Naturale
) illuminates
them»
219
. But Vico also was conscious of the aporetic potential:
«To be useful to the human race, philosophy must raise and di-
rect weak and fallen man, not rend his nature or abandon him in
his corruption» (Axiom V, § 129); «Philosophy considers man as
he should be and so can be of service to but very few […]» (Axi-
om VI, § 131).
In certain ways, it might be tempting to simply speak of “in-
duction” and “deduction”, but that would miss the complexity of
the process which needs to be seen as synchronous
220
. It is not
the case that propositions in “philology” can be, and are, “de-
duced” from fundamental ideas in “philosophy”, as can been
seen in trying to relate the (selective) listings of the contents of
both spheres above (see Part I). Rather, “philosophical” ideas
undergo a transformation – as if caught in a pincer movement –
as they are turned into theoretical constructs under the sway of
both already established constructs, in the right-to-left direction,
and, just as importantly, under the constantly corrective pressure
of the facts of the real world, in the left-to-right direction. This
latter phenomenon comes into play by way of the forgetful func-
tor from the world of humans to the sphere of “philology”; in
the development of theoretical concepts that respect fundamen-
tal “philosophical” insights, and are thus truth-preserving, still,
any number of notions, regardless of how rational they appear,
will need to be discarded in the harsh light, not of historical reali-
ties
per se
221
,
but of concepts that have been derived from them
222
.
In this manner, the potential for the kind of aporia that Vico re-
ferred to might be substantially lessened. The systematic inclu-
sion of this functor in the epistemic process also helps to put Vi-
co’s polemic with some of the great theorists of early modernity
in perspective, including socio-political thinkers (Hobbes, Spino-
za, Bayle), but most importantly juridical theorists (Grotius, Puf-
endorf, Selden
223
). In effect, he subjects their theories to this