Spring 2010 - Interpretation

3 0 0
I n t e r p r e t a t i o n
authority and its “religion of laws” had not preceded the rise of philosophers
(Bk. II, Introduction, esp. §1: “Of Wisdom Generally,” par. 3; “Of the Method,”
par. 6; De Uno, Bk. I, Ch. LXXV.6; De Ratione, Ch. IX). “For over a thousand
years” civil society was conserved in the absence of philosophy and thus also
of “intelligible universals” (intellegibili universali; cf. e.g. SN44, “Of the Elements,”
XII and XLIX; and Bk. II.2.vii, last par.). The principle of civility must
thus precede the rise of philosophy: civil society is irreducible to anything
mediated by human reflection. Yet, civil society must also be irreducible to
the selfish imagination of its selfish inhabitants (SN44, Bk. II.6, last par., and
“Of the Method,” par. 2). In short, everything in Vico tells us that civil society
is not the product of fantasy, and that thus precisely what people ordinarily
believe themselves to know and make for themselves, namely their own lives,
is an illusion—a lie men “feign for themselves” (si fingono) to conceal their
own ignorance of cause (cf. inter alia, SN44, Bk. II.1, par. 1).
What ordinarily disturbs men is not the suspicion that
there may be “another world” beyond their own, but that they may not be
the gods or authors of the realm they currently inhabit. But everything in
the Scienza Nuova contributes to awakening that very suspicion, even where
the “Reader” (Leggitore) is invited to relive the civil world with “divine pleasure”
in his bodily imagination (ibid., “Of the Method,” par. 5, and SN30,
“Of the Principles of this Science,” par. 1)—lest he be tempted to seek divinelike
pleasure outside of his own privacy. By seeking pleasure outside of his
head, man meets the fulminous resistance of the order of things limiting
all imaginations. In order to access what transcends its powers, the body, or
rather the mind buried in its senses, has no other way than to rise in ideas,
abstracting itself out of its own materiality (cf. e.g., SN44, Bk. II.7.i). Ultimately,
only “in God” does the mind mistaking itself as body recognize itself
as truly human, civil or political. In the body’s attempt to extend beyond
itself, the senses are compelled to turn inwardly to divine forms in which the
body may overcome “external” limitations. But in its divined forms the body
unexpectedly senses its own civility or humanity; the body discovers itself as
a political entity, a City unto itself, or the prototype for the City or the Nation
we ordinarily identify as extending outside of our own selves (“Idea of the
Work,” par. 4; Bk. I.29; cf. also “Of the Elements,” LXIV and CVII; “Of the
Method,” par. 2; Bk. II.5.iii).
Only by ascending to the eternal does the body awaken to its
being mind: what otherwise senses itself “divinely” as a mere body, awakens
to its civil nature; the mythical or fabulous yields to “things themselves” (res