This article is devoted to the founder of the study of the historical process, the Italian philosopher of the second half of the sixteenth and first to seventeenth centuries. Vico Giambattista characterized the course of history as a providential and objective process, where each nation develops cyclically in three eras - divine (when the state is not yet, all power belongs to the priests), heroic (when the state is in the hands of aristocrats) and human (when either a representative monarchy appears, or a democratic republic).
Biography
The Neapolitan philosopher and scientist Vico Giambattista was born in June 1668 in a large family. My father sold books, so the boy joined the sciences quite early, even before entering the Jesuit school. It is no wonder that the level of training there did not suit him. Vico Jambattista was so persistently engaged in self-education that the very way of school prevented this occupation, so he had to leave it. He gained knowledge quickly, and the most extensive, versatile and deep.
Among his studies were not only ancient languages: in addition to Latin and Italian, Vico Giambattista studied literature, law, philosophy, history, lived freely in the elements of the works of Cicero, Virgil, Horace, Petrarch, Dante, Bocaccio and many others. He gained real fame in his native city as a lawyer and home teacher, but despite this, financial constraint was his usual state. Therefore, the great man did not shy away from writing articles, speeches, poems, and the like, to order.
Recognition
At the age of thirty, Vico becomes a professor of rhetoric at the University of Naples, whose walls have been working for more than half a century, and his works and philological scholarship are gaining widespread fame. Jambattista Vico was born a whole series of purely scientific works on the basics of the Latin language, where the ancient Italian worldview came from, about the modern method in science, about Antonio Caraffe - “Four Books”, about the foundation of the goal of universal law, which are unified, about laws and their constancy and many other thoroughly studied topics are embodied in books.
And in 1725 the main work of his life came out, to this day being the subject of study. Vico Giambattista wrote The Foundations of a New Science on the Nature of Nations, and this work was instantly bought up and literally read abruptly by the general public, who with great interest discussed the philosophical messages of the author. The controversy was acute, and this topic is still considered topical. The author’s name was recognized in the farthest corners of the scientist in Europe, but many colleagues did not share the worldview that Jambattista Vico adhered to. They found sources of the progressive development of mankind in other places.
Advocacy
Jambattista Vico is a representative of science, who cannot give up his beliefs in any way, and therefore he tried in various ways to influence the opinion of colleagues, to convince them of their rightness. And therefore, two new editions were prepared by him, where he tried to develop as clearly as possible the ideas of the previous work in the form of a polemic with critics.
Then Jambattista Vico, whose concept did not change in his views on the nature of nations, wrote an autobiography, if not purely scientific, then, say, intellectual, where all his searches and finds in the world of science were reflected. In 1735, he was entrusted with the place of historiographer of the entire Kingdom of Naples and therefore, finally, he ceased to feel a material shortage. However, he did not quit teaching: Latin literature and rhetoric he taught students at home.
Main ideas
The real mentors of the scientist, whose ideas he considered more than close, were Tacitus, Plato, Francis Bacon and Hugo Grotius. Giambattista Vico is a representative of a field of knowledge in which the work of Pico della Mirandola, Marsilio Ficino, Galileo and Giorgiano Bruno, as well as Niccolo Machiavelli, had a great influence on the scientist's world.
Until a certain moment, Vico wrote all the works in Latin, then realized that he could significantly expand the possibilities and limits of his native language, and therefore the work of Jambattist Vico “New Science” was published in Italian. Rather, it turned out to be not entirely Italian - it still was not in the world as a single national language, it was a funny and intricate Neapolitan dialect.
New in philosophy
The manner of presentation of this book also remained the same - it was purely scientific, and therefore confusing and dark for understanding, and when not all territories understood the above language of Naples, not every Italian could get to the bottom of the ideas that were put into the book by the author, and feel them.
The book was built using the axiomatic-deductive method and as a normal geometric treatise in which Jambattista Vico developed his ideas, fiercely criticizing the bias and subjectivity inherent not only to individuals, but to entire nations.
He also did not like the methods of extrapolation, which at that time dominated all humanitarian knowledge. He revealed the flaws of Descartes' philosophy. Excessive rationalism and subjectivity in the ideas of this adversary of empiricism have often been the objects of criticism that Jambattista Vico imposed.
Sociology
The new science, designated as historiosophy, the author defined as theology, only rationalized and secular. Jambattista Vico wrote unprecedented things about legal progress at the time.
For example, that social laws, of course, are established by God (or Providence), but natural internal causes often turn the course of the historical process in a different direction from the divine planes. Such is the objective nature of this phenomenon.
Human activity is realized with natural determinism, that is, according to the laws of universal causality, and historical laws direct and regulate the spontaneity of the struggle for human interests.
Social cycle
The innovator Vico revealed the principle of the unity of mankind with the subordination of all nations and countries without exception to social development according to universal laws. The theory of the social cycle outlined by Jambattista is known even now.
Peoples develop cyclically, as if living childhood, youth and maturity, developing along an ascending line, where each stage denies the previous one, and there are social upheavals created by social conflicts through the change of eras. The cause of conflicts is, as always, property relations.
The cycle always ends with a crisis of society, its disintegration, and all cells of a social organism undergo degradation. Then a new cycle begins.
Three "centuries"
Vico shows social processes as the integrity of the interaction of the parties. Each stage - the "century" - has its own right and language, mores and religion, social and economic institutions. Vico chose the history of Rome as the foundation for his generalizations. "The Age of the Gods" - primitive savagery and bestial freedom without borders, the absence of any statehood. Power is with the gods (or rather, with the priests). The world is ruled by piety and fear. Then the fathers of the families wage war with the servants and households, for the termination of which a state is necessary in which the former will rule and the latter will cultivate the land. At this moment, the “age of heroes” begins, when it comes to know from the fathers of the families, and from the servants and households - the common people. Patricia and plebeians. The nature of the state is aristocratic, the feudal lords use force and deceit to maintain power. A time when the strong is always right.
However, ordinary people can’t wait for their turn to win. The "Age of Heroes" ends with the beginning of the "Age of Men" - the highest stage of the cycle. The common people defeats and destroys the feudal lords. A republic or a monarchy with civil and political equality is distinguished by its humane character, reason, conscience and duty triumph. Law becomes rational. Science, crafts, art, which were absent in the early periods, flourish. Trade unites peoples, humanity receives unity, prosperity. But democratic freedoms tend to develop to the size of anarchy, which leads to the destruction of the entire social order. The collapse of the state and the beginning of a new "age of the gods."
Exceptions
However, Carthage does not fit into this historiographic scheme. And not only him. Vico admitted that there are exceptions, and the concept presented above covers only a certain majority. The advances in science that Vico supplied us with are dialectics in the study of numerous spheres of society and the spread of historicism. In all this, this author far exceeded even the French enlightenment. In addition, Vico brought a lot of new considerations to the problems of philosophy and history, philosophy and law, comparative linguistics, philology and so on.
He considered the most important means for understanding history to be the study of legislation, mythology, folk rites and, above all, language. Vico dreamed of developing and establishing the unity of sciences, the wide dissemination of education. It turned out to be right. The synthesis of sciences is now an essential factor for the development of technology. He worshiped the eternal works of Homer - the Iliad and Odyssey, considering them a historical source complete and accurate, but he proved to everyone that Homer himself was a mythical figure. The ideas that he formulated were not forgotten, although many centuries have passed since that distant transitional era from the New Age to the Enlightenment.