New Vico Studies, Volume 1 (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 429 It might seem uncharitable to end a review of an otherwise so splendid edition with criticism, but this reviewer noted a disturbing number of errors in the text or readings that must be questioned. Surely the readers deserve a more carefully scrutinized and proofread text from a scholarly press. STEVEN P. MARRONE Tufts University New Vico Studies, Volume 1. Edited by Giorgio Tagliacozzo and Donald Phillip Verene. New York: Institute for Vico Studies, 1983. Pp. x + 138. $12.5o. New Vico Studies is a series initiated by the Institute for Vico Studies to reflect AngloAmerican scholarship on Vico. That scholarship began essentially in the 194o's with English translations of The Autobiography and The New Science. Its brief history is traced by Giorgio Tagliacozzo, founder of the Institute, in the first of a two-part article which begins Volume 1. The article provides the historical and intellectual context for the series' focus, the exploration of contemporary trends in Vico studies. This is an appropriate time for the appearance of such a vehicle. Anglo-American scholarship on Vico has been characterized by assumptions which render the range of interpretations of his ideas variations on a pervasive theme. Recent writings anticipate a new, less homogeneous stage of Vico studies. Janus-like the articles in New Vico Studies reflect both the pre-occupations of the last forty years, and new perspectives from which Vico is being read. A discussion illustrating the diversity of these articles may serve to underscore the sense of the timeliness of the series. Three of the five articles in Volume ~ share assumptions common to the theme dominant in Anglo-American literature: that Vico was primarily concerned with epistemology, and that his epistemology was "humanist," at least in the sense of justifying knowledge of the historical world. Co-editors Tagliacozzo and Donald Phillip Verene have played an important role in exploring one aspect of this theme: the relevance of Vico's thought for the methodology and epistemology of contemporary humanist studies. Convinced that Vico could provide an interdisciplinary methodology for the social sciences, Tagliacozzo, in particular, stimulated an interest in Vico among researchers whose studies have been fragmented by specialization. Appropriately enough in a volume devoted to current trends, one article directly raises the question of whether Vico can provide a model for interdisciplinary social science research. Treating The New Science as a work to be validated by that research, Harold Stone concludes the question can be decided only by the practical value of Vico's ideas in the field. Belief in the epistemological value of Vico's writings goes beyond immediate practical application, however. The most provocative Anglo-American studies have been by philosophers and historians of ideas. Those influenced by the analytic tradition measure Vico's efforts to ground the historical sciences on universal truths against contemporary scientific method. Others question whether Vico's thought is compatible with that methodology. They interpret his response to Descartes as the 43 ~ JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 23:3 JULY 1985 rejection of a rationalist for a humanist epistemology, a justification of the Geisteswissenschaflen . Verene's article in Volume t is representative of the latter, and an elegant continuation of his own studies. Truth is never an activity of reason, he insists (however holistic) but of memory ("recollectivefantasia") and eloquence: of speech as rhetoric or social activity. A third article by Linda Gardiner Janik on the Renaissance background of Vico's anti-Cartesianism is representative of historical studies supporting Vico's place in the humanist tradition from the Renaissance to nineteenth century historicism. Contemporary concerns are, however, extending the scope of Vico studies beyond these dominant preoccupations. Epistemological studies, both Cartesian and humanist, share belief in the dualism between mind and nature and in man's essential nature as knower. These assumptions have been subjected to critical examination by praxis theorists and, more recently, by such schools of interpretive thought as Hermeneutics, Structuralism, and post-Structuralism. With few exceptions Vichian scholarship has not reflected these, perhaps because they undermine the subjectivist character of the humanism attributed to Vico and the concern to justify a historicist epistemology. Emphasis on the knowledge possible to men of the third age...