Giambattista Vico: Keys to the "New Science": Translations, Commentaries, and Essays

Vico’s Address to His Readers from a Lost Manuscript on Jurisprudence

73 Vico’s Address to His Readers from a Lost Manuscript on Jurisprudence Translation and Commentary by Donald Phillip Verene Vico’s Manuscript In the Villarosa collection of Giambattista Vico’s manuscripts in the National Library in Naples there is an autograph of two sheets of paper, written on three sides in Latin, with the title “Ad Lectores Aequanimos.” I have examined these pages, which are written in Vico’s characteristically legible hand in neat lines. These pages are recognized as written in 1720 as part of a draft, now lost, of the Universal Law. In July of the same year Vico published the pamphlet “Synopsis of Universal Law,” announcing the two books of his work on jurisprudence, and in September the first book appeared , On the One Principle and One End of Universal Law (see the translated text of the “Synopsis” and translated excerpts from the Universal Law). The definitive published text of “Ad Lectores Aequanimos” appears in Varia. Il De mente heroica e gli scritti latini minori, edited by Gian Galeazzo Visconti, volume 12 of Opere di Giambattista Vico of the Centro di Studi Vichiani (1996). The “Ad Lectores” was published first by Giuseppe Ferrari in 1837, who erroneously thought it to be part of Vico’s lost commentary on the Law of War and Peace of Hugo Grotius, which Vico mentions in his Autobiography (A 155). Fausto Nicolini and Benedetto Croce have demonstrated that it is instead part of a first draft of the Universal Law. Visconti suggests that this draft was likely done by Vico as an expansion of his inaugural University oration of October 18, 1719. The text of this oration is lost, but Vico briefly summarizes it in his Autobiography Giambattista Vico: Keys to the New Science 74 (A 156–57). This oration of 1719 announces the basic themes of the Synopsis and the Universal Law. Visconti further suggests that Vico may have developed this probable expansion for publication of the 1719 oration, in a manner analogous to that of On the Study Methods of Our Time (1709), which was delivered in a shorter form as the inaugural oration for October 18, 1708 (A 146). The published version of the Study Methods, Visconti notes, ends with a commiato, a postface, in which Vico takes leave of the text proper, reflecting on his role as its author and addressing the reader as to how the work is to be approached and understood. This commiato was evidently not part of the oration as delivered in 1708 and very likely was added in the published version in response to criticism that had arisen. At one point in it Vico addresses the reader as “Aequanime Lector.” Vico likely developed his ideas in the lost draft on jurisprudence as an enlargement of his study of Grotius. His mention of Grotius in “Ad Lectores” supports this and is probably what led Ferrari to think it part of Vico’s lost commentary on Grotius. Visconti points out that the commiati of the two orations are very different in approach . That of the Study Methods is modest in tone, urging the reader to consider the truth of what has been said and asking the reader’s indulgence. Vico even expresses his personal uncertainties and fears, saying that his greatest apprehension has always been to be “alone in wisdom,” a kind of solitude, he says, that carries with it the danger of becoming either a god or a fool. In the “Ad Lectores” Vico is just the opposite. He is combative, forceful to the point of being abusive, challenging the reader to accept the clear truth of his principles, and refusing to consider criticism. The “Ad Lectores” itself remains very much a draft. Vico likely would have rewritten and polished it if he had published it. In the “Ad Lectores” Vico speaks of seven principles he describes as metaphysical that are in the lost manuscript. Visconti points out that Vico synthesizes seven principles in the Scienza nuova prima (1725). In book 2 Vico says there are three principles of humanity: divine providence, marriage, and burial. In book 3 he says there are three principles of a language common to all nations : poetic fables as a first form of thought, an etymology common to all languages, and the fact that there are Latin words not Vico’s Address to His Readers on Jurisprudence 75 of Greek origin. The seventh...