Review: Vico: The Anti-Descartes

Author(s): Robert Nisbet

Review by: Robert Nisbet
Source: The American Scholar, Vol. 39, No. 4 (Autumn, 1970), p. 714, 716, 718
Published by: Phi Beta Kappa Society
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41209810
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 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR
Vico: The Anti-Descartes
Giambattista Vico: An InternationalSym-
posium. Giorgio Tagliacozzo, editor;
Hayden V. White,coeditor.JohnsHop-
kinsPress. $12.
Reviewed by Robert Nisbet
Sir Herbert Read, one of the contribu-
tors to this splendid volume, tells us that
"Vico is probablythe mostunacknowledged
source of ideas in the historyof philoso-
phy." These are strongwords,but froma
scholar qualified by knowledgeof intellec-
tual historyto utter them. And, I would
agree, about a mind as entitled as any in
Western history to be their beneficiary.
Vico is perhaps the classic instance of the
writerwho is well known but not known
well. There must be few, if any- among
those who know Western thought in any
detail at all- who are not acquainted with
Vico's name and with the factthat his The
New Science,published in 1725,deals with
problemsof historyand with patterns of
intellectualand culturalchange.And in re-
cent years,as the thirdcentenaryof Vico's
birthapproached,a risingnumberof schol-
ars have concernedthemselveswith analy-
sis and interpretationof Vico's writings,as
well as with concreteinfluencesthat may
be seen to have radiated fromthe writings
during the past two centuries. Even so,
there is immense disproportion between
Vico's statureas a thinker and the con-
temporaryknowledgeof his work.
This superblyedited,beautifullyprinted
symposiumshould go a long way toward
bringingVico his proper due. Three cen-
turies(he was born in Naples in 1668 and
died there in 1744) are much too long a
time forone of the mostoriginal minds of
modernhistoryto wait forthe kind of rec-
ognition that has gone to dozens of lesser
minds in our histories.Sir Isaiah Berlin,
another one of the book's two score con-
tributorsand, along with Max H. Fisch and
О ROBERT NISBET, professorof sociologyat
the Universityof California at Riverside, has
writtenchieflyin the areas of social theoryand
the historyof ideas. Among his recentbooks is
Social Change and History: Aspects of the
WesternTheoryof Development.
74
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Elio Gianturco,a consultingeditor,writes:
"No one understoodthe full originalityof
Vico in his lifetimeor fornearlya century
afterhis death, not even those fewwho ac-
tuallyread him; ..."
How do we account for the inabilityof
Western minds to comprehend, to assess
the thrustof, Vico's remarkablestudies of
historicalchange, of the sources and con-
textsof the efflorescences of ideas and the
artsin human history,and of the configura-
tions in which historyreveals itself?There
are, I think,two main reasonsforthislong-
lived inability,and both are amply treated
in this volume. The firstis the tenacious
hold ofCartesianismon the Westernmind;
the second is the equally tenacioushold of
the unilinearidea of progress.
It was Vico's fate to hurl himselfagainst
both of these intellectualforcesjust at the
timeeach was gainingits fullestmeasureof
influencein the West. To a strikingde-
gree, Descartes was the principal object of
Vico's intellectualdislikes.For, as Sir Isaiah
Berlin shows us in his brilliant treatment
of Vico's concept of knowledge,Descartes
(and even more, Descartes'sfollowersdur-
ing the centuryor two afterhis Discourse
appeared in 1637) woefullyconfused two
verydifferenttypesof knowledge.On the
one hand, there is verum, the kind of
knowledgeat which the geometristarrives
on the basis of his own contrivedand de-
clared axioms; on the other, there is cer-
turn,whichis knowledgeof how thingsac-
tually operate in space and time,the kind
of knowledge that Francis Bacon (whom
Vico admired immensely)had called forin
contrast to the logico-deductiveproposi-
tionsof theschoolmenand otherswho con-
tented themselveswith renderingthe im-
plicit into the explicit. Admittedly,both
kinds of knowledgeare important,but Ba-
con and, afterhim, Vico were well aware
of the fatal consequences that must befall
all effortsto reach certumthroughthe arts
or techniquesof verum.
Unhappily,a greatdeal of moral philoso-
phy and, then, of the social sciences that
were formingin the late eighteenthcen-
turywere based preciselyon thisconfusion,
thisextensionof veruminto certum.Hence
 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR
the enormous vogue of Cartesianism
throughwhich, as it seemed, the study of
historyand of human behavior could be
made easy forall willing to followthe sim-
ple Cartesian rules of common sense and
rigorous deduction. Hence too, however,
the neglectof, the inabilityto understand
forthe most part,a philosopherlike Vico,
the whole point of whose work, with re-
spect to the study of human history,was
thefalsityof thisCartesianapproach.
There was also, closelylinked indeed, as
we know, to Cartesianism,the whole, ir-
resistibleassemblage of assumptions,intu-
itionsand grandpropositionsthatwe know
as the Westernidea of progress.From the
time Pascal, Fontenelle and others in the
seventeenthcenturysecularizedthe Augus-
tinián epic, graftingonto it Cartesian as-
sumptionsof the immutabilityof nature
everywhere and at all times,thisidea domi-
nated Westernapproaches to the studyof
historyand of social change. The idea of a
single march of mankind- with all multi-
plicities of time and circumstancefused
into the singletime-order of the West,with
slow, gradual and continuous change the
essence,with progressthroughcumulative
developmentthe principal conclusion- be-
came by the end of the seventeenthcentury
the masteridea of the West.Which, though
amid a growingnumber of challenges in
thiscentury,it stillis.
Vico's studies of historyconvinced him
that unilinear,cumulativedevelopmentor
progressis as false a patternforthe under-
standingof how thingsactually change in
human historyas Cartesianismis for our
understandingof the empirical complexi-
ties of nature and society.Occasionally,as
with respectto Turgot, Hume and Goethe
- all of whom,it is clear fromstudiescon-
tained in this symposium,had made at
least indirect contact with Vico's revolu-
tionary views- Vichian influence shines
through.We see it in Hume's Essays, in
Turgot's economics and also in his too
little-knownResearches into the Causes of
the Progressand Decline of the Sciences
and theArts(a farmoreoriginalworkthan
his better-knownTwo Discourses on Uni-
versalHistory),and we see it in Goethe, if
716
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only in the published conversationswith
Eckermann. In the mid-nineteenthcen-
tury Michelet firstmade Vico's name a
resplendentone, but even then (especially
then) the doctrinesof developmentalcon-
tinuity,unilinear organization of history,
and the logico-deductivemethod in the
social sciences were too powerful. One
could read this Neapolitan genius, but
what preciselydid one do with him and
with ideas, insightsand conclusions that
flewinto the veryface of thekind of knowl-
edge that was being set forthby Comte,
Hegel, Marx, Darwin, Spencer and others
of vast renownin the century?The answer
was,nothing.
Only today, it would seem, when doc-
trinesof developmentalism,continuityand
immanence in the study of social change
and historyare beginning to come under
the attack theyhave long deserved,is the
time perhaps at last propitious for careful
studyof Vico. Errorsand foibles there as-
suredly are in The New Science and his
other works.And I would be doing signal
disserviceif I leftthe impressionthat Vico
was concerned solely with matters today
fallinginto historyand the social sciences.
As the forty-onealmost uniformlydistin-
guishedessaysin thisvolume make evident,
Vico was a man of many interests - mathe-
matical, aesthetic,ontological, as well as
historical and sociological. Yet I am con-
vinced that his greatestcontributionlies
in historyand sociology;and, withinthese
disciplines, in his concepts of time, cir-
cumstance,pluralism,eventand others.
It is easy, on firstreading, to conclude
that in Vico we have chieflya revivalof the
Greek cyclicalview of change: an anticipa-
tion of what we findin Spengler,Toynbee,
Sorokinand othersin our day. To someex-
tent,as H. Stuart Hughes shows us in his
essay on Vico's relation to social theory
and social history,this conclusion is a cor-
rect one. But if one takes the Vichian
theory of ricorsi in somewhat more re-
silient terms,in broader context,we get a
good deal more,I think.Above all, we get
a method: one as useful,generallyspeak-
ing, today as it was when Vico himself
reached his astonishinglyoriginal conclu-
 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

sions about the recurrentpatternsof event seized by a Roman soldier at the arrestof
and change that are to be seen in human Christ in the Garden. Yet this same man,
history.I know verywell some of the diffi- a jealous fiancé of the Veronica whose
culties, even occasional absurdities,to be handkerchiefwiped the faceof thesuffering
found in Vico's several works.But the so- Jesus and became a famous relic, cursed
cial scienceswould be substantiallyfarther his erstwhileleader and wandered forever,
along in their work today had Vico, and until he became a spokesmanfor disarma-
also Turgot and Hume, been the exem- ment and the League of Nations. In Par
plars, instead of Descartes and his follow- LagerkvisťsDeath of Ahasuerus (i960) his
ers, at the time when the social sciences wandering has brought him deep insight,
wereformingin theWest. and he sees himselflike Christhounded by
God, a repudiator,a blasphemer,a rebel,
a brotherof Christ.In Isaac Asimov's The
FromJerusalem to Joyce Caves of Steel (1955), not cited by Ander-
The Legend of the Wandering Jew. By son, the Jew gets lost like all of us in New
George K. Anderson. Brown University
York's expressways,and propheticallywan-
Press, $12. ders there forever.In Michel de Gheld-
erode's Fastes d'Enfer (1929) he is Simon
Reviewed by Francis Lee Utley
Laquedeem, auxiliary bishop of Lapideo-
The Jew still wanders,although he has polis, leader of the forces of evil in our
found precarious rest in Israel, where at modern inferno,and a far cry from the
last he leaves the merchantstereotype, takes romanticizedhumanitarianwandererof the
up soldiery,agricultureand football, and nineteenth century, exemplified, for in-
begins to betraythe common lusts of hu- stance, by the benevolent socialist of Eu-
manity.George Andersonhas caught most gène Sue's Le Juif Errant (1844-45). We
of the historyof his ubiquitous legend. have learned in this century that the
Christ, carryingthe cross, rested on the straightline of progress,the evolution of
doorstep of an establishmentman, who the good, can sometimesbe shatteredby
rudely urged him on. In true folkloristic catastrophe; that, indeed, the liberal and
fashionthe man was paid back in his own the humanitarian may even be surmised
coin, when Jesus replied, "I shall go, but to be the cause of evil. In the whirligigof
you will walk until I come again!" Thus the shiftingtimes Ahasuerus is plainly al-
Jahwehcursed the inhospitableSodomites, ways available as hero, villain, nebbish,
and Zeus the rude neighborsof Philemon deus ex machina, philosopher and sage,
and Baucis. existentialistand bogeyman.
By the twentieth century this simple What of his name? The two most com-
legend has become a variegatedpatternof mon are Ahasuerus and Cartaphilus. The
human wishes and antagonisms.In Lion second of these is the firstto appear, in
Feuchtwanger'sJew Süss (1925), for in- Roger of Wendover's Chronicle under the
stance, the Jew is famous enough and at- the date 1228, where the name recalls the
tractiveenough fora fraudulentadviser to beloved disciple Saint John,who also plays
the ministerSüss to claim his name. In Ed- a part in a legend about the Second Com-
mund Fleg's Jésus (1933) thereis a Gospel ing. The first,Ahasuerus, appears in the
according to the Wandering Jew, Ahasu- Kurze Beschreibungof 1602,an anonymous
erus, who plays several biblical roles in pamphlet that begins the early modern
reconciliation: a disciple of Christ, the traditionwith both historicalforgeryand
paralytic cured by his Master, the young political anti-Semitism(unlovely variants
man who fled naked when his cloak was of the Renaissance's critical movementfor
history and substitution of the secular
О FRANCIS LEE UTLEY teaches English at for the religious). Ahasuerus is an ironic
Ohio State University,and is author of The choice for the butt of Christianhatred; he
Crooked Rib and Bear, Man, and God. was the Persian villain to the Jews in Es-

718

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