Giambattista Vico · Civilisations
Vico’s revolt against Descartes - his defence of history, rhetoric, imagination, and practical wisdom against the attempt to make mathematical reason the only path to truth.
Vico wrote at a time when the philosophy of René Descartes was sweeping Europe, and with it a powerful and seductive idea: that there is only one path to genuine knowledge - the path of clear and distinct ideas, mathematical certainty, and rigorous deductive reason - and that whatever cannot meet this standard of mathematical certainty (history, rhetoric, poetry, practical wisdom, the whole humanist tradition) is not genuine knowledge at all, but mere opinion, to be set aside. The Cartesian program demanded that all knowledge conform to the model of mathematics: certain, clear, deductive, methodical. Against this powerful and growing tide, the obscure professor of rhetoric in Naples mounted one of the most prophetic intellectual revolts in history - a defence of history, rhetoric, imagination, and practical wisdom against the imperialism of mathematical reason.
Vico argued that the Cartesian critical method, by demanding mathematical certainty and dismissing the probable, particular, and practical, neglects and destroys the very faculties essential to human life and the human domains. It neglects prudence (practical wisdom - the capacity to judge and act well in the particular, contingent situations of human life, which cannot be reduced to method). It neglects rhetoric and eloquence (the art of persuasion and effective communication, essential to human and civic life). It neglects imagination and memory (the faculties of vivid apprehension and recollection, essential to creativity, understanding, and the grasp of the particular). It neglects the topics (topica - the art of finding arguments and seeing all sides of a question, of inventiveness and the consideration of possibilities, essential to judgment and discovery). And it neglects the knowledge of human nature, history, and affairs - the practical understanding of human beings and their world. By cultivating only the critical, deductive reason and neglecting these faculties, the Cartesian method, Vico warned, produces people who are clever in abstract reasoning but barren in the practical wisdom, eloquence, imagination, and human understanding essential to life and to the human domains.
Vico’s revolt against the Cartesian imperialism of mathematical reason was a founding act of a whole counter-tradition - a tradition defending the human, the historical, the practical, the particular, the plural against the dream of a single universal method and a single kind of certain knowledge. Against the Cartesian (and later Enlightenment) ideal of a single method, a single kind of certain knowledge, a single rational order applicable to all things, Vico defended the autonomy and value of the human domains - history, politics, law, ethics, rhetoric, poetry - with their distinctive methods (practical judgment, prudence, rhetoric, imagination, historical understanding) suited to their distinctive subject (the probable, particular, contingent, and practical world of human action and life). He defended the faculties essential to human life and the human sciences against their neglect by the critical method; he defended the plurality of kinds of knowledge against the monism of a single method; he defended the human, historical, and practical against the imperialism of mathematical reason. This defence - the founding act of a counter-tradition defending the human and the plural against the dream of a single method and a single certainty - is one of Vico’s deepest and most prophetic contributions, and one that would be hailed centuries later as the founding of a whole humane counter-tradition.
This is the opening of the lesson. The rest — the dialogue, the primary source, and the recall — is in the app.
You learned that Vico defended the humanities and practical wisdom against Cartesian rationalism. Explain his critique of making mathematical reason the only path to truth, and what he defended instead, in your own words.
Leads to Isaiah Berlin.
Begin this lesson →epoché — a humanities education that remembers you.