- Privileged language's generative capacity and social functions
- Now viewed as a counterpoint to The Enlightenment's reductive rationalism and empiricism, but in his own time viewed as a reactionary against Cartesian thought
- The belated last hurrah of Renaissance (Italian) Humanism
- Holds that all knowledge, even that determined by rational or scientific means, is predicated on language, making it primary
- Discuss the sensus communis, or common sense shared by a people (or all people). For Vico this was more real that abstruse, isolated Cartesian musing
- Has a three-part cycle for how civilization proceeds:
- Poetic stage: knowledge is generated through metaphor
- Heroic stage: nations organize through codification of law and relationships
- Human stage: the previous stage allows for greater individual growth, which ultimately leads to societal fracture and dissolution
|
|