This is a dense tome, often filled with digressions and repetition. It is well worth the read, however. Some scholars regard it as the first book methodologically dealing with cultural studies and sociology. Vico believed in cultural pluralism and that one needed to be fully immersed within a society, its time and place, in order to be able to comprehend its history. “For when nations first became aware of their origins, and scholars first studied them, they judged them according to the enlightenment, refinement, and magnificence of their age, when in fact by their very nature these origins must rather have been small, crude, and obscure…. [Scholars are] incapable of entering into the vast imaginative powers of the earliest people. Their minds were in no way abstract, refined, or intellectualized; rather, they were completely sunk in their senses, numbed by their passions, and buried in their bodies.” Unique geographical circumstances were just as important as age in molding different cultures. “Different climates clearly produce peoples with different natures and different customs, and these in turn produce different languages. Nations with different natures view what is necessary and useful to human life under different aspects. This produces different and even opposite customs.”
In this book, Vico tries nothing less than to dissect the progression of western civilization. But he also puts forth the theme of recurring cycles of history. “At first, people desire to throw off oppression and seek equality: witness the plebeians living in aristocracies, which eventually become democracies. Next, they strive to surpass their peers: witness the plebeians in democracies which are corrupted and become oligarchies. Finally, they seek to place themselves above the laws: witness the anarchy of uncontrolled democracies. These are in fact the worst form of tyranny, since there are as many tyrants as there are bold and dissolute persons in the cities. At this point, the plebeians become aware of their ills and as a remedy seek to save themselves under a monarchy.”
The book’s third edition was published in 1744. Much of the minutia in the book has been disproven and is out of date. But Vico’s general pronouncements for the patterns of society still ring true. Vico covers history, culture, mythology, philosophy, philology, etymology, archaeology, and more. “My New Science is a history of human ideas, which forms the basis for constructing a metaphysics of the human mind…. Metaphysics began when the first men began to think in human fashion, and not when philosophers began to reflect on human ideas.” This is a religious work that seeks to explain pagan origins and history with care and respect for the truth.
Vico begins by discussing the ancients use of poetry, myth, and archetypes. “The first peoples of pagan antiquity were, by a demonstrable necessity of their nature, poets who spoke by means of poetic symbols…. Their symbols were certain imaginative general categories, or archetypes…. We find, then, that the divine and heroic symbols were true myths, or true mythical speech…. These archetypes—which is what myths are in essence—were created by people endowed with vigorous imaginations but feeble powers of reasoning. So they prove to be true poetic statements, which are feelings clothed in powerful passions, and thus filled with sublimity and arousing wonder.” Vico later expounds on myth, “These myths are ideal truths, since they truly conform to the merit of the figures they celebrate. And if they are sometimes false in fact, it is only to the extent that they inadequately recognize such merit. Indeed, if we consider the question carefully, poetic truth is metaphysical truth; and any physical truth which does not conform to it must be judged false.”
Vico lays down a series of axioms, which expound his central thesis. “If philosophy is to benefit humankind, it must raise and support us as frail and fallen beings, rather than strip us of our nature or abandon us in our corruption…. The Stoics…. tell us to mortify our senses; and the Epicureans…. make them the rule of life. Both of them deny providence. The Stoics let themselves be dragged by fate; whereas the Epicureans abandon themselves to chance…. By contrast, this axiom admits to our school the political philosophers, especially the Platonists. For they agree with all legislators on three principle points: that divine providence exists, that human emotions should be moderated to become human virtues, and that human souls are immortal. This axiom thus offers us the three central principles of my New Science: providence, marriage, and burial…. Philosophy considers people as they should be…. Legislation considers people as they really are, in order to direct them to good purposes in society. Out of ferocity, avarice, and ambition, the three vices which plague the entire human race, it creates armies, trade, and courts, which form might, affluence, and wisdom of commonwealths. Thus, from three great vices, which otherwise would certainly destroy all the people of the earth, legislation creates civil happiness.”
Vico reveals how poetry must have preceded philosophy. “Imagination is simply expanded or compounded memory… the vividness of the poetic images which the world must have formed in its early childhood…. All the arts serving human need, advantage, comfort, and, to a great extent, even pleasure were invented in the poetic centuries, before philosophers appeared. For the arts are simply imitations of nature and are, in a certain sense, concrete poetry…. People first feel things without noticing them, then notice them with inner distress and disturbance, and finally reflect on them with a clear mind.” Vico feels that poetry expressed for the masses what philosophy was later able to codify for the elite. “Everything that the poets sensed in their popular wisdom was later understood by the philosophers in their esoteric wisdom. We may say, then, that the poets were the sense of mankind, and the philosophers its intellect.” In Greek, poet means creator. Vico asserts that Greek poets had three tasks: “(1) to invent sublime myths which are suited to the popular understanding; (2) to excite to ecstasy so that poetry attains its purpose; and this purpose is (3) to teach the masses to act virtuously, just as the poets have taught themselves.”
Vico also returns to the cultural specificity in early poems and myth. “Languages are more beautiful as they are richer in condensed heroic figures of speech. They are more beautiful as they are vivid; and they are more vivid as they are truer and more faithful to their origins…. Human nature determined the creation of poetic style before prose style, just as human nature determined the creation of mythical and imaginative universals before rational and philosophical universals, which were the product of discourse in prose…. Poetic sublimity always contains popular elements…. By the very nature of poetry, it is impossible for anyone to be both a sublime poet and a sublime metaphysician. For metaphysics draws the mind away from the senses, while the poetic faculty sinks the whole mind into them. Metaphysics rises above universals, while the poetic faculty plunges deep into particulars.”
Vico also relates poetry with history. “History was born first, and poetry later. For history is a direct expression of the truth, while poetry is an imitation of the truth…. Poetic archetypes which are the essence of myths, were created by primitive people because their nature was incapable of abstracting forms and properties. As a result, they represent the manner of thinking of entire peoples as expressed within the natural limits of their barbarism…. Aristotle observes that people with limited ideas generalize particulars into maxims…. All ancient secular histories have their origin in myth…. The earliest Roman history was written by poets.”
Vico then stresses that all the Homeric myths contain archetypes. “Myths which had originally been direct and proper reached Homer in a corrupt and indecorous form…. The Greeks assigned to Achilles, who is the principal subject of the Iliad, all the qualities of heroic virtue, and all the emotions and behaviour which spring from these qualities. (Describing Achilles, Horace summarizes these qualities as a quick temper, fastidiousness, irascibility, implacability, violence, and the judging of right by might.) And the Greeks assigned to Ulysses, the principal subject of the Odyssey, all the properties of heroic wisdom, namely, caution, patience, dissimulation, duplicity, deception, and a combination of regard for words with an indifference to deeds which leads others into error and self-deception. Thus, the Greeks assigned to both archetypes the deeds appropriate to each particular hero.”
Much of this book contains Vico’s interpretations of pagan myths, digging for what they reveal about the origins of civil society and the creation of nation states. One particularly illuminating passage is where Vico discusses the aristocratic nature of the Greek goddess Athena, whom the Romans later named Minerva. “Two passages in Homer prove that Minerva signified the armed aristocratic orders. (1) In the contest of the gods, Minerva hurls a stone and wounds Mars, who is an archetype of the plebeians who serve the heroes in war. (2) Later, she seeks to conspire against Jupiter. This is typically aristocratic behaviour, since in aristocracies lords often plan in secret to eliminate rulers who aspire to tyranny. It is only in aristocratic ages that we read of statues erected to tyrannicides, who would would have been thought traitors, if they had lived under monarchies.” Vico does this time and again: a deep read into myth to come up with his own unique interpretation. He pulls out the esoteric truth obscured by years of story layered on top.
A second example of Vico’s textual analysis: “Corsair raids were symbolized by bulls: witness Jupiter abducting Europa, and the Minotaur or bull of Minos abducting youths and maidens from the coast of Attica. (By the same token, sails came to be called ‘the horns of ships’, an expression used by Virgil.)… Theseus must be an archetype of the Athenian youths who, under the law of force practiced on them by Minos, are devoured by his Minotaur, the bull symbolizing the pirate ship. And Ariadne, who represents the art of seafaring, teaches Theseus to use the thread of navigation to escape from the labyrinth of Daedalus. For although labyrinths later became elegant playgrounds in royal villas, the first labyrinth represented the Aegean Sea as it winds among many islands.”
Later Vico goes on to suggest that the historic Homer was not a single man, but that the true Homer was, in fact, all of Greek antiquity itself. “No placid, refined, or meek philosopher could have naturally produced Homer’s statements, similes, and descriptions…. Homer was an idea or heroic archetype of the Greeks who recounted their history in song…. In this sense, Homer composed the Iliad in his youth, when Greece was young and therefore burning with sublime passions, like pride, anger, and thirst for revenge…. In turn, Homer wrote the Odyssey in old age, when the spirits of Greece had been somewhat cooled by reflection, which is the mother of prudence. This older Greece admired Ulysses, the hero of wisdom. In the time of Homer’s youth, the peoples of Greece took pleasure in coarseness, boorishness, ferocity, savagery, and atrocity. In the time of his old age, they delighted in the luxuries of Alcinous, the sensuality of Calypso, the pleasures of Circe, the songs of the Sirens, and the recreations of the suitors, and their attempts (or rather, their siege and assaults) on Penelope’s chastity…. Homer of the Iliad was from northeastern Greece, since he sang the Trojan War as fought in his country. And the Homer of the Odyssey was from southwestern Greece, since he sang of Ulysses, whose kingdom was in that region.”
Vico finally returns to his attempt to depict the natural course of nations. Vico believed that the natural progression of society was from aristocracy, to democracy, and, finally, to monarchy. He begins by detailing the stages of human nature. “The first human nature was a poetic or creative nature produced by the powerful illusions of the imagination, which is most vigorous in peoples whose powers of reasoning are weakest…. First, religion is the only means powerful enough to restrain the savagery of entire peoples. Second, religions prosper when they are deeply revered by the religious leaders themselves…. The second human nature was a heroic nature, based on the heroes’ belief in their own divine origin…. Although they were born human, they justly thought that their heroic status gave them a natural nobility which made them rulers of the human race…. The third nature was the truly human or civilized nature, which is intelligent, and hence moderate, benign, and reasonable. This nature is guided by the laws of conscience, reason, and duty.” Vico goes on by explicating the natural law of nations. He states that all historians ought to recognize the “eternal and natural ‘royal law’, by which the free power of a state, because it is free, must be realized. As the nobles cede power, the people acquire it, and so become free; and as free people cede power, kings acquire it, and so become monarchs. Hence, just as the natural law of philosophers and moral theologians is a law of reason, so the natural law of nations is a law of self-interest and force…. Since both democracies and monarchies are human governments they are readily interchangeable; but our civil nature makes a reversion to aristocracy nearly impossible… for once the plebeians perceive that they are equal in nature with the nobles, they naturally cannot tolerate inequality in civil law, especially when they can obtain equality in democracies or monarchies.” Vico critiques the end of democracy in Rome. “When democracy grew corrupt, so did philosophy, which sank into skepticism. Learned fools took to maligning the truth. And false eloquence arose, prepared to argue opposite sides of a cause with equal force. People now misused eloquence, as did the plebeian tribunes at Rome. And the citizens, being no longer content with wealth as a source of order, resolved to use it as a source of power.”
Vico ends by presciently speculating on a degenerating demos in general. “But if people are rotting in this fatal civil malady, and can neither accept a native monarch, nor tolerate the conquest and protection of a superior nation, then providence may administer an extreme remedy to their extreme illness. Like beasts, such people are accustomed to think of nothing but their own personal advantage, and in their extreme fastidiousness, or rather pride, they are filled with bestial rage and resentment at the least provocation. Although their bodies are densely crowded together, they live like monstrous beasts in the utter solitude of their private wills and desires. Not even two of them can agree, because each pursues his own pleasure and caprice…. Decadent peoples practice ignoble savagery, and use flattery and embraces to plot against the life and fortunes of their intimates and friends…. If peoples lose their religion, nothing remains to keep them living in society. They have no shield for their defence, no basis for their decisions, no foundation for their stability, and no form by which to exist in the world…. Unless one is pious, one cannot be truly wise.”
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