Spring 2010 - Interpretation

Questioning Northrop Frye’s Adaptation of Vico
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providentially foreshadowing the mind’s property, as a primordial form of
delusion (SN44, “Of the Elements,” VII, XIII, LXIII; “Of the Method,” 2; Bk.
II.1.ii, §1; Bk. II.5, par. 2; De Uno, Bk. I, Ch. LVII, LXIII.10, and LXXV.2).
The deluded imagination of the first nations, compounded with the equally
deluded imagination of the Learned (Dotti) of those same nations, sustains
the belief that civility is originally imposed by someone upon someone else,
with the implication—drawn emblematically by Epicureans—that outside of
every particular “self” there is only Chaos (Cao; compare SN44, Bk. II.7.i,
and SN30, Bk. IV.12.iii: “Last Proofs of the Truth of these Principles,” last
par.). Vico’s response to such views points to a civil coincidence of the private
and the common: while everyone believes or imagines himself in private as
“rule of the universe” (regola dell’universo), the belief or image in question is
truly common. It is common for all men to “sense” reality in private, or “in
the body” (compare SN44, “Of the Method,” par. 5, and “Of the Elements,”
XIII). The interstice between men is not chaos, but an order without which no
communality of private utilities would ever arise. Men commonly partake in
private or imaginatively in an order of things they ordinarily remain ignorant
of (ibid.).
What ties men together in civil society is an activity or perfect
faculty that always transcends the physical imagination of men (ibid.,
“Conclusion of the Work,” par. 3-4). This activity is disclosed to us as what is
“for all, Jove”—namely a divined objective-form of physical motion (Riprensione,
par. 1, and SN44, “Of the Method,” par. 2). Vico’s “Jove” is the heavenly
boundary of our imagination and thereby of “the universe of human sense”
(compare Vico Vindiciae, §6; SN44, “Of the Method,” par. 1-3; and SN44,
“Idea of the Work,” par. 3-4). Above all, Jove is the defining-limit or overarching
“natural royal law” (legge regia naturale) of nations: “Jove” is natural
to every unified, independent civil society. The true Jove is not the mythical
product but the civil limit of the imagination: the true Jove, i.e. the true
God, is the Jove that Christianity recognizes in the Hebrew Bible, namely the
unimaginable God of civil religion (SN44, Bk. II.3, par. 1; “Of the Elements,”
XXVII; “Of the Method,” par. 5; De Constantia Philologiae, Ch. XX.113).
On Vico’s account, the order we can be aware of—and are
aware of as long as we remain pious (ibid., “Conclusion of the Work,” last
par.)—is not limited to what we make: all artificial order depends upon and
partakes in a “natural order” irreducible to words (ordo naturalis; De Uno,
Bk. I, Ch. CLII.7-CLIII). Admittedly, man as union of mind and body—i.e.
as a “something” individuated by the mind (cf. e.g., De Antiquissima, Ch.