verum factum and the problem of historicism

Vico's Principle of Verum is Factum and the Problem of HistoricismAuthor(s): James C. MorrisonSource: Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 39, No. 4 (Oct. - Dec., 1978), pp. 579-595Published by: University of Pennsylvania PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2709443 .

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VICO'S PRINCIPLE OF VERUM IS FACTUM AND THE PROBLEM OF HISTORICISM

BY JAMES C. MORRISON

Our concern in this essay is two-fold. First, we shall offer an interpretation of the principle of verum is factum in Vico's early work, De- Antiquissima Italorum Sapientia (1710), and its later reformulation and application in the Scienza nuova seconda (1730) where it is linked to the doctrine that the civil world (or history) is made by man. We shall try to show how the principle of verum is factum forms the basis of both Vico's science of man and his attempt to unite philosophy and philology (history). Second, we shall argue that (1) his principle im-

plies historicism, i.e., the identification of philosophy and history, or

(correlatively) being and the historical process, and (2) ultimately his principle fails to provide a sufficient epistemological foundation for a science of man and human events. In attempting to achieve a com- prehensive and grounded science of man by uniting philosophy and history, Vico's New Science represents the first systematic explication and defense of historicism. As such, an adequate understanding of his thought is indispensable for an adequate understanding of the philosophical problem of historicism. What follows is intended as a partial contribution to both tasks.

The principle of verum is factum has been called Vico's Grundsatz.1 Nevertheless, the only work in which it is mentioned by name and discussed in detail is the early and somewhat atypical De Antiquissima Italorum Sapientia. It is not mentioned at all in the New Science.2 The former work was published in 1710 and predates the Scienza nuova prima by fifteen years and the definitive Scienza nuova seconda by

'Karl Lowith; Vicos Grundsatz: Verum et Factum Convertuntur, Sitzungsberi- chte der Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften (Heidelberg, 1968).

2 In the De Nostri Temporis Studiorum Ratione (1708) Vico mentions (once) a similar doctrine concerning the connection between demonstrare and facere in

geometrical knowledge and its application to physics and theology. (History is not mentioned.) Vico argues that physics or the knowledge of nature is radically distinct from mathematical knowledge and that therefore the Cartesian project of a mathematical science of nature is not possible. Cf. Giambattista Vico, Opere, Vol.

1, eds. Giovanni Gentile and Fausto Nicolini (Bari 1914), 85 (hereafter: Opere I). The relation between knowing (scienza, conoscere) and making (fare) is discussed in three paragraphs of the Scienza nuova seconda (331, 349, 376). Neither the principle of verum is factum nor the connection between knowing and making is discussed in the Autobiografia.

579



580 JAMES C. MORRISON

twenty years. The title of the De Antiquissima is somewhat curious and

requires some explanation. In the Prooemium Vico tells us that while

engaged in philological studies of the origins of Latin he noted that it contained many "learned" (i.e., philosophical) terms which were not

part of common usage. He concluded that they came from some "esoteric doctrine" of foreign origin. This meant that they must have been derived from Ionic Greek or Etruscan, since the Ionians and the Etruscans were the only non-Latin speaking peoples living in Italy at that time. The wisdom of the "oldest Italians" is therefore not an endemic wisdom. Vico states that his purpose is to discover the philosophical wisdom of the earliest Italian peoples from an etymological analysis of their lan-

guage, i.e., by means of philological or historical research.3 He also claims that such an investigation had never before been successfully carried out since all others (primarily Plato in the Cratylus and Varro) had tried to understand language on the basis of a prior philosophy, that is, had proceeded in the reverse way to that of Vico himself.4 The

question immediately arises as to how serious Vico was about his pur- ported etymological discoveries and the whole philological framework of the De Antiquissima. For example, is the philosophical doctrine that verum is factum in any way dependent on the philological claim that in fact these words once meant the same thing? If they did not mean the same thing, should we conclude either that the philosophical doctrine is false or that it is not important or interesting? In other words, is Vico's assertion that verum is factum intended by him to be understood as essentially a philosophical or a philological doctrine? And if it is essentially a philosophical doctrine, is it one which he himself is advocating?

Although a criticism of his etymological findings was raised almost immediately in a review of the De Antiquissima published in the Giornale de'letterati d'ltalia (1711-12),5 Vico continued to defend his assertion that verum and factum are the same and even tried to sup- port it by passages from Latin writers.6 Nevertheless, like Vico's own contemporaries, modern readers will find his argument forced and (following Nicolini) will dismiss his etymologies as "fanciful," his ancient wise men as "imaginary," and the whole philological argument as "a

8 The full title of the work is: De Antiquissima Italorum Sapientia ex Linguae Originibus Eruenda. The reader will note that already in this early work there is an anticipation of the basic theme of the New Science, namely, the unity of philosophy (the true) and philology (the certain); cf. our discussion below.

Opere I, 125-26. This critical review was followed by a Risposta by Vico, which in turn was

followed by a second criticism and Risposta. The entire exchange is republished in

Opere I, 197-276. e Opere I, 204-06.



VICO'S PRINCIPLE: VERUM IS FACTUM 581

wrapping as useless as it is weak."6" Indeed, Vico himself says in the Risposta that his philological claims are not what is really important in his argument.7 If this is so, then the question arises why he presented a philosophical principle in the guise of an historical fact. The answer may be simply that this kind of procedure was not uncommon in his time and earlier and that he was merely following a familiar and well- established literary tradition.8 This device allowed him to present his own novel and therefore controversial doctrine under the veil of the authority of tradition so that it would have a better chance of acceptance by his contemporaries. (It also served, of course, as a guard against possible ecclesiastical objections.) If this was indeed Vico's intention, then the doctrine of verum is factum should be disencumbered of its philological "wrapping" and considered as his own teaching and judged on purely philosophical grounds.9

More important than the philological background of the doctrine of verum is factum is the fact that the De Antiquissima is presented as a treatise on metaphysics. In its extant form it is part of a projected work in three books bearing the titles, Metaphysicus, Physicus, and Moralis. However, only the Liber primus: metaphysicus was actually written.10 Here Vico's conception of metaphysics is, at least on the sur- face, traditional. Metaphysics is called the scientia de aeternis et im- mutabilibus, the verissima omnium scientia.1l It is both higher than and more fundamental than physics for metaphysica physicam tran- scendit quia de virtutibus agit et infinito; physica metaphysicae pars, quia de formis agit ac terminatis.12 Whereas physics deals with physical things (nature), what arises and passes away, metaphysics deals with immaterial and eternal being, which Vico calls essentia, vis, or conatus.

"Vico, Opere, ed. Fausto Nicolini (Milan-Naples, 1953), 310 n. 1. This edition, besides containing a useful introduction and many notes, contains an Italian translation by Nicolini of the De Antiquissima. Opere I, 257.

8 Gentile claims that the device of assigning one's own views to the Ancients was characteristic of the Italian neo-Platonists (e.g., Ficino) who were, he believes, among the most important influences on Vico's thought: Giovanni Gentile, "Lo Svolgimento della Filosofia Vichiana," Studi Vichiani (Messina, 1915), 96-97; also Francis Bacon's Preface, De Sapientia Veterum, a work undoubtedly known to Vico and bearing some striking similarities and differences to the De Antiquissima.

One should remember also that the doctrine recurs in modified form in the mature New Science without any attempt to "ground" it philologically or historically.

10 Since these were the traditional three branches of philosophy (or science) in later Antiquity, one may infer that Vico originally intended to publish a complete "system" of philosophy dealing with the whole of knowledge and reality. Instead of this, what he did publish (in the New Science) was a partial account of reality, i.e., one dealing only with man and il mondo civile.

1 Opere I, 151. 1 Ibid., 158.




This must be kept in mind when we come to the new understanding of verum is factum and the new conception of metaphysics in the New Science.

At the beginning of Chapter I of the De Antiquissima Vico intro- duces the principle of verum is factum:

(a) Verum est ipsum factum. (b) Latinis "verum" et "factum" idem.

Latinis "verum" et "factum" reciprocantur, seu, ut Scholarum vulgus loquitur, convertuntur. .. .13

Here two different but interrelated statements are being made, the first having to do with identity and the second with synonymity. We suggest the following as an interpretation. (1) Verum and factum are one and the same entity. (2) The terms "verum" and "factum" denote the same entity. (3) They have the same meaning insofar as they have the same extension. (4) Each term may be substituted for the other in purely extensional contexts without affecting the truth of the sentences in which they occur.

In order to preclude some of the more obvious misunderstandings of Vico's view, the following points should be noted. Vico speaks only of verum, an adjective, and not veritas, an abstract noun. Verum is used by him not only adjectivally but also substantively; it means true, a truth, and what is true, depending on the context. Thus, verum is factum is not a doctrine about the nature of truth but about the true.14 Factum is the perfect passive participle of the verb facere, which means both to make and to do. Which meaning is to be preferred again de- pends on the context, though that of making is the primary one. Factum too has both an adjectival and a substantive use; it can mean either made (done), the made (done), or what has been made (done). Vico's principle of verum is factum is therefore radically different from the empiricist - positive view that all truths are truths about facts. Verum is not a truth in the sense of a true propositon and factum is not a state of affairs in the sense of what is denoted or described by a true proposition. From this it follows that verum is factum is not a version of the Correspondence Theory of Truth. Vico is not saying that a proposition is true if and only if it corresponds to or is identical with a fact. Finally, propositions are not that which is true; rather, the true (verum) is, like the made (factum), an entity.'5

13 Ibid., 131. 4 This crucial point is missed by (among others) Arthur Child, whose conflation

of true and truth confuses his whole interpretation: "Making and Knowing in Hobbes, Vico and Dewey," University of California Publications in Philosophy, 16 (1953), 283.

16 On this point see Max Fisch's insightful remarks in "Vico and Pragmatism,"




We shall now examine some developments and implications of Vico's principle. In at least two places of the De Antiquissima Vico speaks of the "criterion" or "rule" of verum as "to have made it": the necessary and sufficient condition of something being true is that it has been made.

Veri criterium est id ipsum fecisse.16 Atque ex his, quae sunt hactenus dissertata, omnino colligere licet, veri criterium ac regulam ipsum esse fecisse ... 17

Although this does not seem to differ significantly from the original formulation of the doctrine, it does suggest another, quite distinct, idea, viz., that knowing (scire) is making (facere): to know is to make the object known in and through the act of knowing it.

Etenim habes verare et facere idem esse .... . . . E s fanno il vero in conoscerlo.18

The interpretation of knowing as a making of the known is linked to the principle of verum is factum in the following way. First, what is true and what is known are coextensive: what is true is what is known to be true. Further - and this is the crucial point - the true is the made because knowing is a making of what is known (true). In other words, the doctrine that the activity of knowing is creative or produc- tive ("poetic") is the ground of the identity of the true and the made. Further, the related but distinct epistemological principles of verum is factum and scire is facere are in turn grounded in a two-fold theological principle: in Deo esse primum verum and Deus primas Factor.'9 The identity in God of intellect and will - thinking = willing - is the basis for understanding both the nature of knowledge and the limits of human knowledge. The infinite divine Creator- Knower is the para- digm for the finite human creator - knower. This in turn leads to the thesis that knowing and the known are related as cause and effect.

Effectus est verum quod cum facto convertitur. Scientia sit cognitio generis, seu modi, quo res fiat.20

Giambattista Vico: An International Symposium, ed. G. Tagliacazzo (Baltimore, 1969), 403. For example, he suggests that verum=factum be rendered into Greek as to alethes= to pragma.

16 Opere I, 133. 17 Ibid., I, 136. Ibid., I, 191, 214. 9 Ibid., 1, 131-32. Lowith has rightly emphasized the importance of the theological

background of Vico's conception of knowledge by arguing that the Sch6pferkeit of knowing presupposes both the Christian idea of God as infinite creator and of man as an Ebenbild of God. It is thus fundamentally alien to Greek thought: "Vicos Grundsatz," op. cit., passim and "Giovanni Battista Vico und die Folgen," Merkur, 22 (1968), 1099. Further material on the historical background of the principle of verum is factum can be found in Benedetto Croce, "Le Fonti della Gnoseologia Vichiana," Saggio sullo Hegel (Bari, 1967), 233-59 and Rodolfo Mondolfo, II "Verum:Factum" Prima di Vico (Naples 1969). 20 Opere I, 149, 132.




The identity of verum and factum now means: the known (verum) is the effect (factum) of which the act of knowing is the cause. Verum and factum are to knowing as the effect is to the cause.

Knowing is a putting together of the elements or parts of things: knowledge is synthesis: "Scire autem sit rerum elementa componere."21 This com-posing is radically different in God and in man, for in God, infinite mind, the elements are "internal" to His mind, whereas in man, finite mind, they are "external." This in turn is the difference between intelligentia and cogitatio. Because God knows by intelligentia what He knows is immanent to His act of knowing, but because man knows by cogitatio what he knows is transcendent to it. In other words, God's knowing is a knowing of Himself or a part of Himself, whereas man's knowing is of what is other than himself. Vico also compares human knowledge to a "division" or "anatomy" of things:

. . . Homo autem studet, dividendo, ea scire. Itaque scientia humana naturae operum anatome quaedam videtur.22

Human knowledge is not only a synthesis - "composing" - but also an analysis - "taking apart." Analysis, then, is a moment or mode of synthesis, for man can compose the elements of things only through time, discursively, and not instantaneously, intuitively. A further difference between divine and human knowledge is explicated by means of a striking and suggestive metaphor. Verum divinum is an imago rerum solida, whereas verum humanum is a monogramma, seu imago plana. The one is like a plasma, the other like a pictura.23 God's knowledge (as intuitive) is adequate, man's knowledge (as discursive) is inadequate.24 In either case, however, to know is to demonstrate the cause, i.e., to effect or bring about something. But since this is possible only when the elements of the thing are themselves within the knowing mind, Vico concludes that man cannot know physical things (nature) because their elements are outside him, and they are outside him because he did not make them.25

The human mind possesses, however, a capacity by means of which it can in part remedy this limitation (vicium), namely, abstraction (abstractio), the power to "feign" or make fictions. Abstraction lies at the basis of all mathematical knowledge, for it provides arithmetic with the fiction of the one (unum) and geometry with the fiction of the

" Ibid., I, 132. 22 Ibid., I, 133. 2 Ibid., 132. 24 Cf. Kant's definitions of intellectual and sensible intuition (intuitus originar-

ius and intuitus derivativus) and phenomenon and noumenon. (Critique of Pure Reason, B 72 and B 313 note.) For example, Vico's metaphor of a plane and solid image is reminiscent of Kant's distinction between knowledge of things as they appear and knowledge of things as they are in themselves.

5 "Atque ob id ipsum physica a caussis probare non possumus, quia elementa rerum naturalium extra nos sunt." Opere I, 150.




point (punctum). All mathematical truths are the products of operations - "working" - of the mind on these two fictional entities. Abstrac- tion does not mean that the one and the point are "drawn from" a prior substrate. Rather, they are created by the mind tamquam ex nihilo, similar to the way God created nature from nothing. In mathematical thinking the finite human mind creates a quasi-world of entities and truths analogous to the real world of nature created by the infinite mind of God. Thus, only in mathematical knowledge can man attain maximum clarity, exactness, and certainty; only in mathematics is human truth like divine truth.26 The mathematicians

a caussis demonstrant, quia mens humanum continet elementa verorum, quae digerere et componere possit: et ex quibus dispositis et compositis existit verum quod demonstrant; ut demonstratio eadem ac operatio sit, et verum idem ac factum.27

Having posited mathematics as the highest, indeed the only, kind of knowledge (scientia) which man possesses, Vico proceeds to set up a scale of certainty drawn on the basis of the relative degrees of abstract- ness or freedom from materia corpulentia. Since mathematics is the most abstract it is the most certain; physics and mechanics are less certain because they study the motions of bodies which are not made by the human mind and hence are external to it. The least certain of all is moral knowledge, which studies the motions of spirits (motus animorum.)28 In other passages, however, Vico expresses a somewhat different view about physical science, for he sees in the experiment a close analogy to the coincidence of knowing and making in mathematics.29 Chemistry, for example, has discovered humano generi utilis- siman operariam artem (namely, pharmaceutics) and mechanics, by means of its experiments, has produced effects "that give us works similar to those of nature."30

28 "Et ad Dei instar ex nulla re substrata, tamquam ex nihilo res veluti creat punctum, lineam, superficiem...." "Et ita scientia humana divinae sit imitatrix...." Ibid., I, 135, 137.

27Ibid., I, 149-50 "Et producendo, vel decurtendo, vel componendo lineas, addendo, minuendo, vel computando numeros infinita opera efficit, quia intra se infinita vera cognoscit." Ibid., I, 135; also 141 and Risposta, 208.

28 Ibid., I, 136. As we shall see below, the conclusion that the moral sciences (the sciences of the mind or man) are the least certain is the reverse of the doctrine of the New Science.

29 Mondolfo's assertion that for Vico knowing and making was possible only in mathematics should therefore be qualified: Mondolfo, op. cit., 52, 76-77. Croce is frustratingly inconsistent on this question, for at times he says that verum is factum implies that science belongs only to God, at other times that mathematics is the only vera scienza and that man has only certezza but not verita. Cf. La Filosofia di G.B. Vico (Bari, 1965), 14-17.

80 Opere I, 136, 266. Nevertheless, it is true that, despite his study and admira-




A final implication of the identity of verum and factum and knowing and making must now be considered, namely, its serving as the basis for a radical criticism and rejection of Cartesian rationalism.31 Descartes had found the ideal of knowledge, the identity of thought and being, in the principle, cogito, ergo sum.32 For Vico too the ideal of knowledge lies in the identity of thought and being, but for him the cogito itself is mere coscienza (consciousness) of being and not scienza (knowledge) of it. Since self-consciousness is not the same as

self-knowledge, science cannot be reduced to or derived from consciousness alone. Science is not the mere conscious certainty of the clear and distinct idea, but is knowledge of the cause (per causas scire), which in turn implies the effecting or making of the object known. Because mind (or thought) does not know the cause of its existence it cannot know its being or essence. And the only way the mind could know the cause of its existence is if it were itself the cause of its existence, i.e., if the mind made itself: self-knowledge implies self-making.

... Quia, dum se mens cognoscit, non facit, et quia non facit, nescit genus seu modum, quo se cognoscit.33

Thus, Descartes was wrong to claim to know (scire) that he is a think-

ing being (res cogitans): that he exists is certain, not what he is. Had he really understood the meaning of the cogito he would have said not cogito, ergo sum (I think, therefore I am) but lo penso, dunque esisto or lo penso, dunque ci sono (I think, therefore I exist). Existere does not mean essere but simply esserci: "to be there."34 The Cartesian

tion of Bacon, Vico did not fully appreciate or foresee the implications of his

epistemological doctrine for natural science and the modern project of the mastery of nature. This was left to Bacon, Descartes, and their followers, among whom, in this regard at least, Vico is not to be counted.

"1 Croce, La Filosofia di G. B. Vico, op. cit., Chs. 1 & 2, esp. p. 29. Croce begins his interpretation of Vico's philosophy with a discussion of what he calls Vico's

"gnoseologia." This approach, though illuminating in many ways, is open to the basic objection that Vico himself did not view "theory of knowledge" as a distinct

philosophical discipline. Beginning in this way also creates the false impression that for him the central problem was the nature of knowledge. Vico himself, however,

says that his central problem was the unity of the true and the certain, which arose not from reflections on knowledge but from a study of Roman Law. Cf. The A uto-

biography of Giambattista Vico, trans. Max Fisch and Thomas Bergin (Ithaca, N.Y., 1963), 116, 115.

8 The cogito exhibits "l'intuitiva connessione del pensiero con l'essere, del

cogito col sum ...." Croce, op. cit., 11. Thus, the ergo is not an "inference" but an

identity: Descartes does not try to infer his being from his thinking but rather claims to discover it in the indubitable certainty of his thought.

83 Opere I, 136. 84 Risposta, Opere I, 220-21. It is interesting to compare Vico's interpretation of

the cogito with the Existentialist critique of Descartes' "intellectualism."




cogito therefore, does not succeed in refuting skepticism, for the skeptic does not doubt or deny the certainty of his own self-consciousness but self-knowledge, the knowledge of his being or essence. Descartes had mistaken the certainty of a sign (signum) of the existence of thought for the science of the cause (caussa) of thought.35 A scientia entis is not possible solely on the basis of a conscientia cogitandi.36

We are now in a position to state the crucial difference between the De Antiquissima and the New Science in regard to the principle of verum is factum. In the De Antiquissima Vico's position is: since verum is factum (and knowing is making) and since the mind does not make (or cause) itself, self-knowledge or a science of mind is not possible. The position of the New Science is: self-knowledge or a science of mind is possible because the mind does make itself. In the former work verum is factum is used to deny self-knowledge; in the latter work it is used to ground it. In what follows we shall try to bring to light the inner motivation and logic of this decisive turn in Vico's thought, a turn that helps prepare the way for historicism.

Nowhere in the New Science does Vico mention by name the principle of verum is factum. Rather, he speaks of knowing (scienza, conoscere) and making (fare) in three extremely terse and central paragraphs (331, 349,376).37 We shall discuss some salient points in each with regard to (1) the problem of the true and the certain (the unity of philosophy and philology) and (2) the doctrine of the mind making itself and the problem of self-knowledge.

Vico opens with paragraph 331 with a powerful image suggesting several important parallels with Descartes.

But in the night of thick darkness enveloping the earliest antiquity, so remote from ourselves, there shines the eternal and never failing light of a truth beyond all question: that the world of civil society has certainly been made [fatto] by men, and that its principles are therefore to be found within the modifications [modificazioni] of our own human mind.

"The night of thick darkness enveloping the earliest antiquity" is the doubt and obscurity surrounding the first human things. Vico, like Descartes, begins from a situation of confusion and error. Like him he considers all historical and philological knowledge to be unreliable, a mixture of truth and falsehood, reason and imagination. "All that has been written is a tissue of confused memories, of the fancies of a

6 Opere I, 139-40. 36 Ibid., I, 140; also Risposta, 208-09. 8 Our references to the New Science (hereafter NS with paragraph numbers)

will be to the second edition, edited by Fausto Nicolini in Giambattista Vico: Opere (Milan-Napoles, 1953) and the English translation by Max Fisch and Thomas Bergin, The New Science of Giambattista Vico (Ithaca, 1968).




disordered imagination . . ." (NS 330).38 And just as Descartes had for this reason resolved to doubt all that he had learned "from my earliest years" in the Schools,39 so Vico proposes that "for the purposes of this inquiry, we must reckon as if there were no books in the world" (NS 330). And where Descartes found a "light" in the clarity, distinct- ness, and indubitable certainty of the cogito, Vico finds a "truth beyond all question" which alone is capable of illuminating our ignorance of the first human things (the origins of civil society). However, this light is not for him the certainty of self-consciousness but the unquestionable verita that "the world of civil society has certainly been made by men." In both cases man is taken as the fixed and stable ground - the "Archi- medean point" - on which the reconstruction of human knowledge is to be based.40 Though where Descartes uses the Archimedean point of the cogito to render men the mditres et possesseurs de la nature,41 Vico will use the truth that man has made his own world as the foundation of a purely contemplative science of man. Where Descartes is concerned with the future transformation of nature, Vico is concerned with the rediscovery of the human past.

Vico asserts that the "beginnings" (principi) of the civil world are "to be found within the modifications of our own human mind. Since God made nature only He can have scienza of it; but man can have scienza of the civil world because men themselves made it (NS 331). The same point is made several paragraphs later when he says that "this world of nations has certainly been made by men, and its guise must therefore be found within the modifications of our own human mind" (NS 349). Here (implicitly recalling the De Antiquissima) Vico refers to mathematical knowledge which "constructs the world of quantity" out of points, lines, and figures. We thus see how his principle of verum is factum has been reinterpreted to apply not merely and primarily to the fictional world of mathematical abstractions but to the real world of human history. Completely reversing his earlier position, the latter is now made central and fundamental; mathematical knowledge is used merely as an analogy to help explain the historical knowledge of man's past. In addition, the knowledge of civil society contained in the New Science is superior to geometrical knowledge since its subject-matter has more reality (realtd) than the abstract fictions of geometry. Again a reference is made to God for Whom il conoscer e 'I fare e una medesim'a cosa (NS 349). Again too we see the theological background of Vico's conception of knowledge, only now the implication is clearly that not the mathematician but the philos-

38 Cf. Descartes' similarly disparaging remarks about history and fables in the Discours de la Methode (Premiere Partie).

39 Cf. the opening paragraph of Descartes' Meditationes della Prima Philosophia, 40 Cf. the opening paragraph of Meditatio II of the Meditationes. 41 Descartes Discours de la Methode (Sixieme Partie).




opher- Philologian is Godlike. For it is not the proofs of Euclid but those of the New Science which give un divin piacere, and they do so precisely because the New Science itself is a divine knowledge where knower and creator are identical. For "he who meditates this Science narrates to himself the ideal eternal history so far as he himself makes it for himself by that proof, 'it had, has, and will have to be'" (NS 349). Historical knowledge is the re-making of what other men have made in the past, namely, civil society. In this re-making what the mind of the knower knows is precisely the mind of the past men who made civil society: the historian, in knowing others, is at the same time knowing himself. Thus, the mind's knowledge of itself is not an "objec- tive" knowledge of a being "over-against" the knowing subject. Nor does the subject "lie under" what is known. There is no ultimate otherness of knower and known because what is known (the verum) is a factum of the knower. The ideal of scientia -the identity of thought and being - is realized.42 The principle of verum is factum now means: the true is to be found in the world that man himself has made. The link between the epistemological principle of the De Antiquis- sima and the "first truth" of the New Science has been forged.43 The next step is to see how this new doctrine is related to the doctrine of the human mind's self-making.

In paragraph 376 Vico says that "the first men of the gentile nations, children of nascent mankind, created things according to their own ideas." But whereas "God, in his purest intelligence [intendi- mento], knows things, and, by knowing them, creates them; they, in their robust ignorance, did it by virtue of a wholly corporeal imagination [fantasia]." The first men, then, were "poets."44 The discovery that the first men were poets was for Vico "the master key" of the New Science (NS 34). This remarkable statement can be fully understood only when one remembers the doctrine that knowing is making. For the imagination is the creative faculty by which the first poetic men made the myths, laws, customs, and institutions that constitute the world of nations. Thus, it is precisely because the first men were poets and hence made their world that this world can be known. As a science of "the principles of humanity" the New Science is a science of creativity, of man qua creator.45

42 Mondolfo, op. cit., 17 and Croce, op. cit., 35. '4 This link is so intimate that Ldwith, apparently inadvertently, calls both verum

is factum and the doctrine that the civil world has been made by man Vico's "Grundsatz." Cf. Vicos Grundsatz, op. cit., 5.

"Vico always emphasizes the root meaning of poeta (from poiein): maker or creator.

"6 For Croce the New Science is ultimately a filosofia della fantasia, an "esteti- ca" or science of the imagination. Cf. Aesthetic, trans. D. Ainslie (New York, 220).




In order to know what the first men made one must follow the order of their own making, i.e., proceed in the same way as they themselves proceeded. Since the first men began with crude and unformed minds and created their world "as if from nothing," the historian in his re-making must "empty" his own mind in order to accomplish an empathetic return to the original simplicity of the first men. That is, he must put aside the "conceits" of the philosophers and philologians and proceed "as if there were no books in the world" (NS 330).46 "Doctrines must take their beginning from that of the matters of which they treat" (NS 314). The matter of the history of man must begin where man himself began, "from the time these creatures began to think humanly" (NS 338).

We had to descend [discendere] from these human and refined natures of ours to the quite wild and savage natures which we cannot at all imagine and can comprehend only with great effort (NS 338).47

To say that historical knowledge is a "descent" means that human nature, which is cultivated and rational, originates from a crude and bestial nature. The origins and principles of man lie in what is lower than man. What man is qua human is intelligible only in terms of what he is qua sub-human, for "the nature of everything born or made betrays the crudeness of its origin" (NS 361).48 Vico's "descent" thus reverses the Platonic "ascent," for where Plato urges the philosopher to "look up" to the light of the divine Ideas, Vico demands he "look down" into the dark depths (or cave) of man's bestial beginnings. This radical reversal of the tradition parallels another reversal, namely, the reduction of natura or essence to nascimento or genesis. Since for Vico the nature of something is its birth "in certain times and with certain guises" (NS 147), man's nature is to be understood by understanding his birth: the mode of his development out of his origins. Man knows what he is as man by knowing how he came to be what he is: self- knowledge is knowledge of one's history.

The poets made the civil world out of certain primitive "elements" just as the geometer makes the world of quantity out of the elements of points, lines, and figures.49 The basic elements of civil society are the

46 Again the analogy with Descartes is striking, for the method of doubt also involves a "self-emptying" of the mind in order to reach the primordiality and simplicity of the clear and distinct idea.

4 Vico adds that this "descent" cost him twenty years of hard work, i.e., precisely the period separating the De Antiquissima (1710) from the Scienza nuova seconda (1730). Thus, the reinterpretation of verum is factum in terms of the problem of a science of history took twenty years to develop and mature.

48 "From these first men, stupid, insensate, and horrible beasts, all philosophers and philologians should have begun their investigations of the wisdom of the ancient gentiles. . ." (NS 374).

49 If one remembers Vico's understanding of mathematical knowledge as a "con-




three institutions of religion, marriage, and burial (NS 333, 360). By reducing the mind to a state of emptiness the philosopher- historian is able to disclose these elements and then remake - "narrate" - the creative activities of the first men who created themselves by transforming their bestial imaginative natures into the human rational natures of civilized men.

Vico claims that the New Science gives "the basis for refuting all opinions hitherto held about the principles of humanity" (NS 163; cf. 120-27). It does so because it unites for the first time the true (il vero) and the certain (il certo). Establishing the foundations of the true, will serve for considering this world of nations in its eternal idea, by that property of every science, noted by Aristotle, that science has to do with what is universal and eternal (scientia debet esse de universalibus et aeternis). Propositions XV[I]-XXII will give us the foundations of the certain. By their use we shall be able to see in fact this world of nations which we have studied in idea . . . (NS 163).50

The problem of uniting the true and the certain is the basic problem of the New Science. It is the problem of "verifying" the certain particular and "certifying" the true universal, of grounding philology in philosophy and philosophy in philology (NS 359).51 It is implicit in Vico's critique of Descartes, in the De Antiquissima, that the cogito gives only certitude and not truth, consciousness and not knowledge. It is also implicit in the attempt to discover a philosophical truth by means of the philological analysis of linguistic facts. But only in the New Science is the problem decisively formulated and solved. Indeed, this is precisely why the New Science is "new." Hitherto, the philosophers "failed by half" in not certifying their reasoning and truths by philology, and the philologians "failed by half" in not verifying their observations and facts by philosophy (NS 140).52 The problem of the unity of the true and the certain, as well as its implicit solution, is tersely expressed in the phrase, "ideal eternal history,"53 for what

structing" of the theorems in the very act of "contemplating" them (NS 376), one can understand why he gives the title "Elements" to Section II of Book One and why he says it consists of axioms, postulates, and definitions (NS 11 & 1133). For the New Science also "constructs" the human past in the act of "contemplating" it. Note too the implicit identification of theorema and poiema.

50 The principles of "the history of human nature" are those of "universal history" (NS 368).

Guido Fasso, Vico e Grozio (Naples, 1971), 60. 2

"Philosophy contemplates reason, whence comes knowledge [scienza] of the true; philology observes that of which human choice is the author, whence comes consciousness [coscienza] of the certain" (NS 138).

" It is also tersely expressed in the phrase, "the natural law of the gentes," for qua natural it is universally true, qua law of the gentes it is particular and certain. This means that the rational law is at the same time the actual one. Cf. Fasso, op. cit., 47-50.




Vico seeks is the universal and eternal form of the real and changing particulars of history: a philosophy (science) of the historical. Vico finds the unity of the true and the certain in the corso and ricorso traversed everywhere and always "by every nation in its rise, development, maturity, decline, and fall" (NS 245, 114, 349, 393). The ideal eternal history is the ever recurrent "revolutions" of the world of nations. Vico's corso-ricorso is like the ever recurrent revolutions of the cosmic cycle, with the crucial difference that each ricorso is accom- panied by a redemption and rebirth of man's human and social nature which has been both perfected and corrupted by the corso of civiliza- tion.54

We are now in a position to pose and resolve the question of the relationship between the problem of the unity of the true and the certain in the New Science and that of the identity of the true and the made in the De Antiquissima.s5 This question reduces to the following question: Is the ii certo of the New Science the same as the factum of the De Antiquissima? The answer is clearly yes. For, as we have already seen, where in the New Science Vico speaks of the relation between scienza and fare, in the De Antiquissima he speaks of the relation between verum and factum. Further, in the De Antiquissima he identifies verum, factum, dictum, and verbum, so that the true is the made, the

spoken, and the word.56 In the New Science, philology is defined as the study of the certain which includes both the deeds and words of men. The philologians are "the grammarians, historians and critics" who have occupied themselves with "the languages and deeds Uatti) of peoples" (NS 139). Thus, for both works verum=factum=certum: what is true are the particular deeds and words made by men. But whereas the De Antiquissima had restricted the implications of this doctrine to mathematics and theology, the New Science applies it to all human activities. Indeed, it is applied both to man and being itself.

Of the three transcendentals of Scholastic philosophy - ens, verum, bonum - Vico explicitly equates verum and bonum and both of these with factum.57 But he never explicitly identifies ens with factum.

,4 Karl L6with, Meaning in History (Chicago, 1964), 134-35; also NS 1103-06. "5 We have already noted that the latter is not mentioned in the New Science

or in the Autobiography, which recounts the historical genesis of Vico's philosophy (cf. Autobiography, op. cit., 113). On the basis of Vico's own authority, then, the discovery and formulation of the principle of verum is factum played no role in the historical development of his thought. What is given a central place in the Autobiography is the problem of the unity of the true and the certain (ibid., 116, 155). This does not imply, of course, that verum is factum did not play an important role in the logical development of his thought, as indeed it did.

6" Opere I, 189. 5 "Et, ut uno verbo absolvam, ita verum cum bono convertitur, si quod verum

cognoscitur. . ." Opere I, 137.




However, this final identification is clearly implicit in the New Science. For there, all that is (ens) is either a factum of God - nature - or of man - history. In both cases entia are facta. The only facta with which the New Science is concerned are the things made by man, i.e., the world of nations. According to both Vico and the tradition, ens= verum; according to Vico, verum=factum and hence ens=factum. What is is what is true, and what is true is what has been made by man. This means that philosophy as the search for an understanding of eternal being - to ontos on - becomes the search for the truth about human facta. The final step in the transformation of philosophy into history (historicism) occurs when the human facta - the things made by man - are interpreted as man himself. This brings us to the problem of the self-making of the human mind, which for Vico is the theme of metaphysics.

Vico calls the New Science a metafisica which meditates on "the common nature of nations" in the light of divine Providence (NS 31). Its "task" is that of "clarifying the human mind" (NS 502).58 This "metaphysics of the human mind" is based on "a history of human ideas"; in the case of "poetic metaphysics" it is a study of the creative minds of the first men (poets), the study of the mind making itself, transforming itself from the bestial sub-human mind of passion and imagination into the rational human mind. Such a metaphysics is non- rational and non-abstract; it seeks its proofs not in the external world but within the modifications of the mind of him who meditates it. "For since this world of nations has certainly been made by men, it is within these modifications that its principles should have been sought" (NS 374). Here Vico rejects the doctrine of the De Antiquissima that mind or thought cannot know itself because it cannot know its cause and that it cannot know its cause because it does not make itself. Rather, in the New Science a genuine science of mind is possible precisely because the mind does make itself. This science will be capable of realizing the ideal of knowledge - the identity of knower and known --since knower and known are one and the same: the human mind itself. The principle of verum is factum thus finds its completion in the New Science with the conception of metaphysics as the science of the mind's self-making.59 The mind as self-made is the factum of which the verum is the New Science itself. Philosophy is the history of the history of mind.

"6The same conception of metaphysics is found (surprisingly )in the Risposta. Opere I, 251; also NS 365.

59 "Elle [the New Science] est la connaissance du devenir collectif, de l'etre qui se cree et qui se connait tout a la fois, et qui trouve la garantie de sa certitude dans l'identification du sujet et de l'objet; la science, c'est la creation de l'humanite




Vico's doctrine of verum is factum requires that, for the mind to know itself, it must make itself. But was he committed to this view in its most extreme form, i.e., that the mind is a wholly self-constituting process, that it makes itself ex nihilo? In the Conclusion of the New Science, Vico says that although "men have themselves made this world of nations," the "mind" from which civil society emerges is "often diverse, at times quite contrary, and always superior to the particular ends that men proposed to themselves . . ." (NS 1108).60 History is what men do by choice, but the final outcome of their actions repeatedly and inevitably surpasses their doing in that it is not what they themselves originally intended: history is ironical. It is therefore not wholly the product of man's spontaneous activity.61 Further, poetic metaphysics - the study of the mind - is closely related to poetic physics, "the greatest and most important part" of which is "the contemplation of the nature of man" (NS 692). The first men (the poets) "by the particular physics of man, in a certain sense created [generarano] themselves . . ." (NS 367; my italics). In the poetic economy (which deals with the family and house- hold), Vico claims to show how "the founders of gentile humanity in a certain sense generated and produced [generato e produtto] in themselves the proper human form in its two aspects," a human "corporature" and "the form of our human mind" which "they brought forth from their bestial minds" (NS 692; my italics). It is significant that in both these passages dealing with man's self-making Vico adds the phrase, in un certo senso, thereby implying that humanity is not literally causa sui but rather a "forming" of a prior material substrate, namely, the pre-human bestial "nature" of the first "men." In short, the human mind makes itself not ex nihilo but ex natura.

But Vico's qualification of the doctrine of the mind's self-making threatens to undermine the claim of the New Science to give self- knowledge. For if the mind does not wholly make itself, and if - as the principle of verum is factum implies - such self-making is a necessary condition for self-knowledge, then the mind cannot know itself and self- knowledge is impossible. The principle of verum is factum implies that

par l'humanite, enregistree par l'humanite encore." Paul Hazard, La Crise de la Conscience Europeenne 1680-1715 (Paris, 1961), II, 256.

0 Is the "mind" of which Vico speaks here the human or the divine mind (Providence)? Is he being deliberately ambiguous in order to point to the profound ambiguity, the irony, of history itself?

l Karl Lowith, one of Vico's most insightful interpreters, denies that Vico has die menschliche Natur "vollstiindig historisiert." He thus rejects the "liberal" interpretation of Croce that for Vico history is "the history of freedom." Rather, Lowith maintains that the historical consists of both what men do and what hap- pens to them: history is both Tun and Ereignis, a "dialectic" of freedom and necessity. Cf. Meaning in History, op. cit., 125-26 and Merkur, op. cit., 1102.




man can know himself only to the extent that he makes himself: complete self-knowledge or wisdom implies complete self-making. And as we have seen, Vico denies that man or the human mind has made itself ex nihilo. This means that the New Science is ultimately a failure: the principle of verum is factum cannot serve as the epistemological basis of a science of man. The question of the truth of historicism remains open, and with it the question of the truth about what abides both above and within man.

University of Toronto.



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