Vittorio Hösle - Vico’s New Science of the Intersubjective World

VICOS NEW SCIENCE OF THE INTERSUBJECTIVE WORLD

VICOS NEW SCIENCE OF THE INTERSUBJECTIVE WORLD

VITTORIO HSLE

translated and edited by
Francis R. Hittinger IV

University of Notre Dame Press
Notre Dame, Indiana

University of Notre Dame Press

Notre Dame, Indiana 46556

www.undpress.nd.edu

Copyright 2016 by University of Notre Dame

All Rights Reserved

Manufactured in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Hsle, Vittorio, 1960- author. | Hittinger, Francis R., translator, editor.

Title: Vicos New science of the intersubjective world / Vittorio Hsle ; translated and edited by Francis R. Hittinger.

Other titles: Einleitung, Vico und die Idee der Kulturwissenschaft. English

Description: Notre Dame, Indiana : University of Notre Dame Press, 2016. |

Translation of: Einleitung: Vico und die Idee der Kulturwissenschaft : Genese, Themen und Wirkungsgeschichte der Scienza nuova; originally published in v. 1 of Prinzipien einer neuen Wissenschaft uber die gemeinsame Natur der Volker. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016029261 (print) | LCCN 2016034741 (ebook) |

ISBN 9780268100285 (hardback) | ISBN 0268100284 (hardcover) |
ISBN 9780268100308 (pdf) | ISBN 9780268100315 (epub)

Subjects: LCSH: Vico, Giambattista, 1668-1744. Principi di una scienza nuova. | HistoryPhilosophy. | Philosophy. | Social sciences. | BISAC: PHILOSOPHY / General. | HISTORY / Europe / Italy. | BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Philosophers. | PHILOSOPHY / Social.

Classification: LCC B3581.P73 H6713 2016 (print) | LCC B3581.P73 (ebook) |

DDC 195dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016029261

ISBN 9780268100315

This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).

This e-Book was converted from the original source file by a third-party vendor. Readers who notice any formatting, textual, or readability issues are encouraged to contact the publisher at .

For Jan Rohls, in gratitude and admiration for his splendid history of Christianity.

CONTENTS

When in 1990 Christoph Jermann and I published the first complete German translation of the critical edition of Vicos Scienza nuovaPrinzipien einer neuen Wissenschaft ber die gemeinsame Natur der Vlker (Hamburg: Felix Meiner)because of the enormous complexity of the work, I deemed it necessary to add a long introduction, which was in fact a monograph. In 1997, it came out in Italian as Introduzione a Vico (Milan: Guerini e Associati), translated by Claudia and Giovanni Stelli, and edited by Giovanni Stelli. The text has been widely used in both Germany and Italy, because it was conceived as an introduction for people who are not yet Vico scholars and because it tried, at the same time, to cover as many as possible of the variegated themes that pervade the New Science. My model was Croces 1911 book La filosofia di Giambattista Vico, even if I disagree with him on most philosophical issues.

The possible main merit of this text consists not so much in the familiarity with most facets of Vicos main work, which was the result of the quite demanding task of translating it into a non-Romance language, nor in the relatively comprehensive reception of the secondary literature, mainly German and Italian, but in the philosophical evaluation of Vicos project. The appropriation of his main thoughts, rather than mere historical erudition, was the aim of the book, which prepared my later systematic study of 1997, Moral und Politik: Grundlagen einer politischen Ethik fr das 21. Jahrhundert (Munich: Beck).

Since the latter book came out in English in 2004 as Morals and Politics (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press), I am particularly glad to see an English translation of this study on Vico. My former student, Francis Hittinger, combines stylistic elegance with an excellent command of Latin and Italian, and also his knowledge of German is remarkable. He has mainly worked from the Italian version, but I have compared his translation with the German original, of which it is a faithful rendition. Needless to say, I have added a lot of material in the notes and in the bibliography to render justice to some of the most important studies of the last twenty-five years; I also deleted some notes that were dealing with literature relevant at the time, but today of less importance. I am aware that some of my notes are rather long: they usually contain discussions of secondary literature or of historical details that are of interest primarily for the scholar but that the person mainly interested in the basic structure of Vicos work may skip through.

The structure of the book has remained the sameeven if I subdivided the original large second part into two partsbecause the structure truly corresponds to the books topic. After having taught Vico twice in the United States, I am convinced that my book will help the student, and probably also many colleagues, to have a philosophically fruitful, philologically reliable, and holistic view of what Vico was after, which of his claims were true innovations and where he went wrong, and what his lasting place in the history of European thought is.

In the present work, reference is always made to the classic multivolume edition of Vicos works edited by Fausto Nicolini (19111941; Opere, 11 books in 8 volumes; Bari: Laterza). Giovanni Gentile collaborated on the first volume, and Benedetto Croce, who had unilaterally edited the first edition of the fifth volume, published in 1911, collaborated with Nicolini on the second edition of that volume (revised and expanded). Nearly identical editions of the Italian set of volumes listed belowvarying only in dates of publication or volume number in some instances and with minor addenda and revisions in others, but largely with the same pagination as cited in the texthave been made openly accessible online, thanks to the digitization of the Scrittori dItalia series by the Universit di Roma, Sapienza. These digitized texts can be consulted at the Biblioteca italiana website (http://www.bibliotecaitaliana.it/) and make it possible for an attentive reader or specialist to conveniently locate the full textual citations as cited within this work.

The volumes with their respective titles and years of publication are listed below, including abbreviations as cited in the text: