Spring 2010 - Interpretation

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I n t e r p r e t a t i o n
It is only “in God” that we come to recognize Mind in the
civil world of our making; for that world could not have been made without
Mind; but this Mind could not be that of Romulus, the mythical brute
founder of ancient Rome. The Mind in question must be divine or divined.
Ultimately, the Mind of Nations must be God—purissima mens. The true
Author of the World of Nations is not deluded man, but God Himself guiding
the makings of men beyond their selfish interests, to serve one “common
good” (ben comune) identical with the providential conservation of Cities
(SN44, “Idea of the Work,” par. 4, 10-12, 24; Bk. I.21; Bk. II.2.iv, par. 14; Bk.
II.5.v, par. 1; SN30, par. 26).
The Question of the Convertibility of the True
and the Made
All of Vico’s arguments notwithstanding, Frye might object
that what the philosopher appears to hold as “true” is to be understood as
the product of his own “making”—assuming that what is true is identical
to what is made. Accordingly, Frye might argue that Vico’s Scienza Nuova
is to be read as a “poetic” or mythical narration wherein mythology (or the
interpretation of myth) is indistinguishable from what is altogether mythical.
After all, Vico himself indicates that “logοs…first and properly signified
‘fable’” (SN44, Bk. II.2.i, par. 2). Indeed, the literary critic states: “We have
invoked Vico’s axiom verum factum, that what is true is what we have made
true, as an essential axiom of criticism” (Frye 1992, 135). But did Vico ever
profess the unqualified identity of the true and the made?
Even beyond Paolo Cristofolini’s accurate reminder that “the
verum ipsum factum of the De Antiquissima (1710) does not reappear in the
axiomatic implant nor in other places in the three redactions of the Scienza
Nuova” (2001, 15), it remains to be seen if even in the De Antiquissima Vico
ever claimed that what is true is plainly identical to what is made, i.e., that we
cannot understand what we do not make, or that human understanding is
essentially “poetic” in the Greek sense of “fabricating.”
As if in silent anticipation of the Scienza Nuova, but explicitly
pointing back to both “Platonic” and “Aristotelian metaphysics,” in 1710
Vico presents his De Antiquissima Italorum Sapientia as sketching “the
design of one entire metaphysics, in which, as for the good proportion of the
drawing, it is required that—given one’s writing as citizen of a republic that
is Christian—the matters be treated ‘dressed appropriately’ [acconciamente]
for the Christian religion” (Risposta 1711, part. 2, par. 1; cf. SN44, Bk. IV.14.