Pagina 18 - BCSV, XXXV, 2005

18 LEON POMPA
merely properties but kinds of properties, such as that of performing a
work of great family necessity. But this, evidently, is an extremely com­
plex kind of property, involving a connection between instances of thè
different kinds of properties designated by thè concepts, ‘performing’,
‘work’ and ‘family necessity’, each of which in turn would need to des­
ignate a kind of property, if it is to be named in accordance with thè orig­
inai explanation. If this is correct, this explanation of poetic characters
would not dispense with reliance upon an ability to grasp abstract uni­
versals, since what Vico has done is simply to shift thè onus of compre-
hension from thè caratteri to be used, in this case thè names of persons,
to an underlying mental ability to identify thè generai properties desig­
nated by abstract concepts. Moreover, thè mental ability now seems
more closely related to thè second meaning of xàpaKTip given above,
for it now presupposes thè ability to recognise generai or shared charac­
ters or qualities. But, as in thè case of thè references to antonomasia in
De constantia iurisprudentis, this would not render Vico vulnerable to
Croce’s criticism of thè imaginative universal, since it would not amount
to thè suggestion that poetic characters could replace abstract concepts
as a non-conceptual mode o f thought but simply that they could replace
abstract nouns as a way of referring to thè shared properties. It follows
that thè theory as thus understood would have thè same consequence
for thè various interpretations of thè myths that Vico gathers together,
particularly in thè final book, as was thè case in De constantia iurispru­
dentis. What Vico offers in these sections would simply be an interpre-
tation of thè symbolism involved in thè myths. When he states, for ex­
ample, that Juno is thè principle of solemn marriage13, Diana that of thè
chastity of human mating and of thè worship of thè perennial springs14,
and so on, this could only mean that Juno and Diana were names - or
even possibly images, since he talks in terms of some of thè imagery as­
sociated with these figures - that symbolised or stood for certain kinds
of practice and belief that could be identified as instances of concepts,
but not that they constituted a non-conceptual mode of thought through
which these practices were themselves understood. It would certainly
follow from Vico’s account of these practices that thè world of poetic
belief would be conceived as having a different content from anything
that arises later but not that thè mode o f thought through which it was
conceived was of a wholly different order from that in which it would
later be conceived.
13 Ibid., § 414.
14 Ibid., §§ 416-417.