Æsthetic in the "Scienza nuova."
The importance of Vico's new poetic theory in his thought as a whole as well as in the organism of his Scienza nuova has never been fully appreciated, and the Neapolitan philosopher is still commonly regarded as the inventor of the Philosophy of History. If by such a science is meant the attempt to deduce concrete history by ratiocination and to treat epochs and events as if they were concepts, the only result of Vico's efforts to solve the problem could have been failure; and the same is true of his many successors. The fact is that his philosophy of history, his ideal history, his Scienza nuova d' intorno alia comune natura delle nazioni, does not concern the concrete empirical history which unfolds itself in time: it is not history, it is a science of the ideal, a Philosophy of the Spirit. That Vico made many discoveries in history proper which have been to a great extent confirmed by modern criticism (e.g. on the development of the Greek epic and the nature and genesis of feudal society in antiquity and in the Middle Ages) certainly deserves all emphasis; but this side of his work must be kept distinctly apart from the other, strictly philosophical, side. And if the philosophical part is a doctrine expounding the ideal moments of the spirit, or in his own words "the modifications of our human mind," of these moments or modifications Vico undertakes especially to define and fully describe not the logical, ethical and economic moments (though on these too he throws much fight), but precisely the imaginative or poetic. The larger portion of the second Scienza nuova hinges on the discovery of the creative imagination, including the "new principles of Poetry," the observations on the nature of language, mythology, writing, symbolic figures and so forth. All his "system of civilization, of the Republic, of laws, of poetry, of history, in a word, of humanity at large" is founded upon this discovery, which constitutes the novel point of view at which Vico places himself. The author himself observes that his second book, dedicated to Poetic Wisdom, "wherein is made a discovery totally opposed to Verulam's," forms "nearly the whole body of the work"; but the first and third books also deal almost exclusively with works of the imagination. It might be maintained, therefore, that Vico's "New Science" was really just Æsthetic; or at least the Philosophy of the Spirit with special emphasis upon the Philosophy of the Æsthetic Spirit.
Vico's mistakes.
Among so many luminous points, or rather in such a general blaze of light, there are yet dark nooks in his mind; corners that remain in shadow. By not maintaining a rigid distinction between concrete history and the philosophy of the spirit, Vico allowed himself to suggest historical periods which do not correspond with the real periods, but are rather allegories, the mythological expression of his philosophy of the spirit. From the same source arises the multiplicity of those periods (usually three in number) which Vico finds in the history of civilization in general, in poetry and language and practically every subject. "The first peoples, who were the children of the human race, founded first the world of the arts: next, after a long interval, the philosophers, who were therefore the aged among nations, founded the world of the sciences: with which humanity attained completion."[44] Historically, understood in an approximate sense, this scheme of evolution has some truth; but only an approximate truth. In consequence of the same confusion of history and philosophy he denied primitive peoples any kind of intellectual logic, and conceived not only their physics, cosmology, astronomy and geography as poetic in character, but their morals, their economy and their politics as well. But not only has there never been a period in concrete human history entirely poetic and ignorant of all abstraction or power of reasoning, but such a state cannot even be conceived. Morals, politics, physics, all presuppose intellectual work, however imperfect they may be. The ideal priority of poetry cannot be materialized into a historical period of civilization.
Linked with this error is another into which Vico often falls when he asserts that "the chief aim of poetry" is to "teach the ignorant vulgar to act virtuously" and to "invent fables adapted with the popular understanding capable of producing strong emotion."[45] Having regard to the clear explanations he himself gave of the inessentiality of abstractions and intellectual artifice in poetry; when we remember that for him poetry makes her own rules for herself without consulting anybody, and that he clearly established the peculiar theoretical nature of the imagination, such a proposition cannot be taken as a return to the pedagogic and heteronomous theory of poetry which in substance he had left far behind: therefore, without doubt, it follows from his historical hypothesis of a wholly poetical epoch of civilization, in which education, science and morality were administered by poets. Another consequence is that "imaginative universals" are apparently sometimes understood by him as imperfect universals (empirical or representative concepts as they were subsequently called); although, on the other hand, individualization is so marked in them and their unphilosophical nature so accentuated that their interpretation as purely imaginative forms may be taken as normal. In conclusion, we remark that fundamental terms are not always used by Vico in the same sense: it is not always clear how far "sensation," "memory," "imagination," "wit" are synonymous or different. Sometimes "sensation" seems outside the spirit, at others one of its chief moments; poets are sometimes the organ of "imagination," sometimes the "sensation" of humanity; and imagination is described as "dilated memory." These are the aberrations of a thought so virgin and original that it was not easy to regulate.
Progress still to be achieved.
To sever the Philosophy of the Spirit from History, the modifications of the human mind from the historic vicissitudes of peoples, and Æsthetic from Homeric civilization, and by continuing Vico's analyses to determine more clearly the truths he uttered, the distinctions he drew and the identities he divined; in short, to purge Æsthetic of the remains of ancient Rhetoric and Poetics as well as from some over-hasty schematisms imposed upon her by the author of her being: such is the field of labour, such the progress still to be achieved after the discovery of the autonomy of the æsthetic world due to the genius of Giambattista Vico.
[1] Scienza nuova prima, bk. iii. ch. 5 (Opere di G. B. Vico, edited by G. Ferrari, 2nd ed., Milan, 1852-1854).
[2] Scienza nuova seconda, Elementi, liii.