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Giambattista Vico Imagination and Historical Knowledge Cecilia Miller Assistant Professor of European Intellectual History Wesleyan University, Connecticut 150th YEAR M St. Martin's Press ©CeciliaMillerl993 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road,LondonWlP9HE. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. First published in Great Britain 1993 by THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 2XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the worid First published in the United States of America 1993 by Scholarly and Reference Division, ST. MARTIN'S PRESS, INC., 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 ISBN0-312^9719^ Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Miller, Cecilia. Giambattista Vico : imagination and historical knowledge / Cecilia Miller. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN0-312^9719^ 1. History—^Philosophy. 2. Vico, Giambattista, 1668-1744. 3. Imagination. I. Title. D16.8.M673 1993 901^c20 93-10200 CIP For Gordon DesBrisay ί Contents Acknowledgements ix Note on the Texts x Select List of Vico 's Writings and List ofAbbreviations xi Introduction 1 1 VICO'S mXELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT 9 1. Vico's Orations (1699, 1700, 1701, 1704, 1705, 1707) and His Supposed Epistemological Break (1710) 9 2. Verum ipsumfactum 25 3. Categories of Historical Knowledge 28 4. A Critique of Collingwood 29 5. ffistoricalCycles 32 6. Historical Sense 34 7. History as a Science 38 2 VICO'S EARLY WRITWGS, 1709-1728 41 1. Introduction 41 2. De nostri temporis studiorum ratione (1709) 41 3. De antiquissima italorum sapientia (1710) 47 4. // diritto universale (1720-22) 53 5. La scienza nuova prima (1725) 58 6. Vita di Giambattista Vico scritta da si medesimo (1725, 1728) 65 3 LA SCIENZA NUOVA, 1725,1730,1744 72 1. The Three Editions 72 2. Vico's Vocabulary 74 3. UniformityofIdeas 75 4. Sapienza volgare 79 5. Religion and Society 83 6. Free Will 85 7. Formation of Society: The Taming of Primitive Man 86 8. Setti di tempi 89 vii viii Contents 9. New Critical Art 93 4 LANGUAGE, fflSTORICAL RECONSTRUCTION AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF SOCffiTY 97 1. Introduction 97 2. Vico and Early Language 99 3. Language as an Instrument of Human Thought 104 4. The History which Vico Sought 106 5. Myths 109 6. Social Institutions 112 7. OrderinMyths 115 8. bnagination and Historical Reconstruction 117 5 EVlAGINATION AND fflSTORICAL KNOWLEDGE 120 1. Introduction 120 2. Fantasia as the Poetic, Recreative Instinct 121 3. Fantasia as the Expression of the Spirit of a Particular Age 124 4. Fantasia as la scienza nuova 125 5. History 127 6. Historical Knowledge 132 7. Fantasia V 135 8. OtherInterpretations j 138 9. ACritiqueofBerlin У 139 Conclusion 143 Notes 147 Bibliography ΥΠ Index 202 Acknowledgements I begin by thanking Isaiah Berlin, who supervised my Oxford D.Phil, thesis on Vico, for his enthusiasm and support throughout my research. Conversations with Donald Verene, Leon Pompa, Laurence Brockliss, John Robertson and Joseph Mali spurred me on in my studies. I am indebted to Giorgio Tagliacozzo for putting me in touch with many Vico scholars in Italy and Britain. Quentin Skinner and Patrick Gardiner examined my thesis and I thank them for their cOmments. Donald Kelley, Perez Zagorin, Dan Terkla and Giuseppe Mazzotta gave me detailed criticism of the manuscript. I am grateful for the funds I received during my time in Oxford from the Overseas Research Scheme, the Oxford University Scholarship and Balliol College. The Centro di Studi Vichiani made me very welcome in Naples and provided me with much needed materials. Lessico Intellettuale Europeo in Rome furnished me with draft versions of its forthcoming concordances to several ofVico's writings. Librarians at the Taylorian Library and the Bodleian Library (Oxford), the British Library, the London Library, the Biblioteca Nazionale «Vittorio Emanuele ΠΙ» di NapoU, the Butler Library (Columbia), the Beinecke Library (Yale), the Widener Library, the Houghton Library and the Law Library (Harvard) and the Library of Congress assisted me. Eleanor Wood, Jerri-Lyn Scofield and Julia Perkins gave me excellent help with the manuscript. James 0'Hara and Christopher Parslow corrected my Latin cheerfully. Neil Parekh helped with the index. The Society of Fellows at Columbia University provided me with a very congenial venue for work on this project as a Mellon Postdoctoral Research Fellow. Thank you to my colleagues at Wesleyan University for their comments on my book. I appreciate the help I received &om my editors, Giovanna Davitti and Anthony Grahame, at Macmillan. My parents, J. Melvin and Wanda (Howard), and my siblings, Kyle and Celesta, read the manuscript. I thank them for their unfailing support throughout my research and for giving me a love of books and of debating ideas. Thank you to William Fike. ix