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Vico and Metaphysical Hermeneutics
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 January 2010
Extract
My aim in this paper is to outline and discuss Vico's conception of the nature and importance of hermeneutics. Vico never used the word ‘hermeneutics’ but since we would now recognize one aspect of what he was offering in his New Science as a theory for the interpretation and understanding of past cultures, I shall occasionally talk in terms of a theory of hermeneutics. My procedure will be to indicate first the context which led Vico to think that it was important to have a theory of hermeneutics and why he thought that such a theory ought to have a certain form. I shall then try to show that there are two forms of the theory. The first, in which hermeneutics is dependent upon metaphysics, involves certain unacceptable features which arise from the context in which he originally formulated it. The second, in which metaphysics is dependent upon hermeneutics, requires that the theory be freed from an important aspect of this context. Finally, I shall ask whether, in this second form, the theory has something to commend it to contemporary thinkers.
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References
1 On Method in Contemporary Fields of Study, in Vico: Selected Writings, trans. Pompa, Leon (Cambridge University Press, 1982), pp. 44–45Google Scholar.
2 In his early works Vico is explicit about the theological origins of this doctrine. See Oration VI, in On Humanistic Education (Six Inaugural Orations), trans. Pinton, Giorgio A. and Shippe, Arthur W. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993), pp. 128ffGoogle Scholar.
3 This is one of the main points in On Method in Contemporary Fields of Study, Pompa, Vico, pp. 41–44.Google Scholar
4 The Autobiography of Giambattista Vico, trans. Fisch, Max Harold and Bergin, Thomas Goddard (Cornell University Press, Great Seal Books, 1963), pp. 154–155Google Scholar.
5 Ibid. p. 155.
6 Paragraphs 91–93. Pompa, Vico, pp. 127–128.Google Scholar
7 Paragraphs 90 and 391.Google ScholarIbid. pp. 127 and 154–155.
8 In the New Science of 1744, there is no explicit reference to the ‘art of diagnosis’ and the few paragraphs which Vico wrote which bear upon this conception were excluded from publication.Google Scholar
9 The New Science (1725), paragraph 11. Pompa, op. cit., p. 23.Google Scholar
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11 The New Science (1977), paragraph 348. Bergin and Fisch, p. 104Google Scholar.
12 Paragraph 40. Pompa, Vico, p. 99.Google Scholar
13 The New Science (1744), paragraph 924. Bergin and Fisch, p. 338Google Scholar.
14 Ibid, paragraph 918. Bergin and Fisch, p. 336.
15 Ibid, paragraph 915. Bergin and Fisch, p. 336.
16 Ibid, paragraph 377. Bergin and Fisch, p. 117.
17 The New Science (1725), paragraphs 387–388, Pompa, Vico, pp.151–153. The New Science (1744), paragraph 143, Bergin and Fisch, p. 64Google Scholar.
18 The New Science (1744), paragraph 163, Bergin and Fisch, p. 67Google Scholar.
19 Ibid, paragraphs 154–157, Bergin and Fisch, p. 65.
20 Ibid, paragraph 114, Bergin and Fisch, p. 57.
21 Ibid. paragraph 412–423, Bergin and Fisch, pp. 132–136.
22 Ibid, paragraph 399, Bergin and Fisch, p. 126.
23 Ibid. Paragraph 345, Bergin and Fisch, p. 103.