Pagina 14 - BCSV, XXXV, 2005

14 LEON POMPA
universals, which ought to have been explained, was presupposed, and
thè life of poetic man accordingly completely deprived of concepts3.
These associated criticisms have largely been ignored, however, in thè
wealth of recent writings in which an interest in Vico’s conception of thè
poetic and imaginative origins of human culture has been centrai. Nev-
ertheless, despite thè fundamental place attributed to thè imaginative
universal in these writings, thè conception itself remains highly obscure.
With a few notable exceptions4, many of thè authors who refer to it have
assumed that it is not problematic. In what follows, while not subscrib-
ing to Croce’s generai reading of thè New Science, I shall argue that his
criticisms of these cruciai elements in Vico’s theory were largely correct
and, indeed, that, for a number of reasons, thè problems associated with
thè imaginative universal and with Vico’s conception of thè poetic men-
tality and its associated language go well beyond them.
2. By way of introduction, it is useful to consider how thè concepts
of poetic characters, and, later, imaginative universals, arise in Vico’s
thought. In De constantia iurisprudentis, as is well known, Vico talks ex-
clusively of poetic characters and does not explicitly distinguish between
divine and heroic characters. The only characters for which he offers an
explanation are, in fact, heroic characters, which, he says, arise through
antonomasia, i.e. through thè use of thè proper name of an individuai to
stand for a species to which that individuai belongs. Hence ‘Hercules’ is
given as an example of a heroic character, standing for men of excep-
tional strength5. Although Vico does not draw attention to it, this ex-
} Ibid., pp. 59-60: «Il concetto dell’universale fantastico come anteriore all’universale ra­
gionato concentra in sé la duplice contraddizione della dottrina; perché aU’elemento fanta­
stico dovrebbe essere congiunto in quella formazione mentale l’elemento dell’universalità, il
quale, per sé preso, sarebbe poi un proprio universale, ragionato e non fantastico: donde una
petitio principii, per la quale la genesi degli universali ragionati, che dovrebbe essere spiega­
ta, viene presupposta. E, d’altro canto, se l’universale fantastico s’interpretasse come purifi­
cato dell’elemento universale e logico, cioè come mero fantasma [...] la sapienza poetica [...]
verrebbe mutilata di un parte essenziale del suo organismo, perché privata di ogni sorta di
concetti, e per dire così, disossata».
4 The most important exceptions to whom I shall refer in this article are D. Ph. VERENE
in his Vico’s Science of Imagination, Ithaca-London, 1981; G. CANTELLI, in his Mente corpo
linguaggio, Firenze, 1986, and Id., Gestualità e mito: i due caratteri distintivi della lingua ori­
ginaria secondo Vico, in this «Bollettino» XX (1990), pp. 77-116; and J. T rabant , in his Vi­
co’s New Science of Ancient Signs [Nette Wissentschaft von alten Zeichen. Vicos Sematologie,
Frankfurt a.M., 1994], London-New York, 2004.
5 Cfr. G. Vico, Institutiones oratoriae, ed. by G. Crifò, Napoli, 1989, caput XII, IV, p.
332. Antonomasia is described as thè substitution of an excellent example for a kind, thus
‘Maelius’ for ‘one who causes trouble’, ‘Lucretia’ for ‘a chaste woman’. But it is clear, from