Spring 2010 - Interpretation

Questioning Northrop Frye’s Adaptation of Vico
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“Fate” (Fato) or blind necessity, nor the “Chance” (Caso) invoked by Vico’s
Epicurean nemesis (SN44, “Conclusion of the Work,” par. 3-4). It is common
for every “national” history to privately partake in its own eternal Idea,
which is its own God and Law (nomos). The total unfolding of the “Story”
(Storia) Vico tells his “Reader” (Leggitore, akin to Legislatore or “legislator”)
of nations does not pertain to the “particular and temporal [in tempo]” Story
“of the laws and of the facts of the Romans or of the Greeks”; rather,
on [su] the substantial identity of intendment and diversity of their
own modes of self-explanation, we shall have the Ideal Story of Eternal
Laws, over [sopra] which run [corron] the facts of all Nations, in their
own risings, progresses, states, decays, and ends, even if it were [se ben
fusse]—and this is certainly false—that from Eternity time and again
were to be born Worlds that were Infinite [Mondi Infiniti]. (SN44, Bk.
V, concluding par. prior to “Conclusion of the Work”)
The “full-fledged” Story of nations is not disclosed in time,
but in Eternal Laws or Ideas serving as basis for legislation (cf. e.g., ibid., “Idea
of the Work,” par. 17-22; Bk. II.2.iv, second half; De Uno, Bk. I, Ch. XLVIII;
De Antiquissima, Ch. I.4; Cristofolini 2001, 33-50). These same Ideas are commonly
(hence Vico’s “identity”) intended by men in physical privacy (hence
the “diversity”), or through each man’s power of intendment unaided by any
external intervention (compare e.g. ibid., “Of the Elements,” CXIV, and De
Antiquissima, Ch. IV.2-3). The temporal “course” (corso) of civil things is
inseparable from their eternal “legal” basis, over which are ordered “bodies”
(compare De Uno, Bk. I, Ch. CXL and CLII; and SN44, “Of the Elements,”
XII-XVI). Why, the course of civil things emerges as a “mixture” of mind
and body, or of authority and its subject (compare ibid.; Bk. IV, par. 1; and
Bk. V, par. 2). Not accidentally, Vico’s “three ages [and] three tongues…ranthrough
[scorsero] and were spoken in the World throughout the whole time
passed before [the Egyptians…] with constant, and never interrupted order
of causes and effects always going through three species of Natures, out of
which natures came out three species of Customs…” (ibid., Bk. IV, par. 1). For
“from the same time began the Gods, the Heroes and the Men; for purely Men
were those who fantasized the Gods and believed their own heroic nature a
mixture of that of the Gods and that of the Men: thus in the same time began
such three tongues” (ibid., Bk. II.2.iv, par. 13).
Vico’s “Three Ages”?
The image of the “three ages” that Vico borrows from
ancient Egyptian lore indicates the coincidence of three aspects of human