Pagina 25 - BCSV, XXXV, 2005

THE IMAGINATIVE UNIVERSAL 25
without language, Vico would seem to have avoided thè sort of assump-
tion about their causai connection which is thè source of Locke’s prob-
lems.
Unfortunately, his commitment to thè common poetic origins of both
ideas and of a language that is naturally related to them is incompatible
with this insight. For thè suggestion that a gesture, say, can have a nat­
urai relation to an idea implies that both fall within thè same category of
things, in this case, entities in thè material world. Thus an idea turns out
to be some sort of an object, rather in thè way in which Locke assumed
that thè ideas that were used in understanding were some sorts of copies
of parts of thè content of perception. The differences between them
would be that for Locke ideas were causally derived from perception
whereas for Vico they were thè ideational counterparts of a language
which like them, was figurative. But thè figurative aspect of Vico’s ‘ideas’
would stili leave them as some kind of object of which thè ‘signs’ used
in language could be imitations, which is thè very conception that his
theory of logos seems intended to deny. Thus thè effect of treating thè
relationship between language and ideas as a consequence of their twin
origins in poetry is to turn ideas into objects with figurative features to
which thè poetic characters of language can be related. Having avoided
thè sort of assumption on which Locke’s mistaken causai account de-
pended, in explaining thè relation between language and ideas by refer-
ence to their common poetic origin, Vico has, in effect, introduced some-
thing that is structurally not far from Locke’s copy theory of ideas, with
thè substitution of naturai relations between figurative elements in both
language and ideas for Locke’s copy relations between elements of per­
ception and ideas33.
Apart from thè points adduced here, it might seem that Vico has, at
least, avoided Locke’s mistake of taking ideas to be private mental enti­
ties but it would seem that thè resemblance between thè two theories
was sufficient to encourage him, occasionally, to lapse into this erroneous
view. For his account of thè way in which children understand what is
said to them, is given in terms of thè letters that they hear arousing in
them thè idea to which they are attached34.
I do not think that thè arguments presented above are sufficient to
show that Vico’s theory of thè universale fantastico is as mistaken as
33An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, II, I, where Locke writes: «The use, then,
of words is to be thè sensible marks of ideas; and thè ideas they stand for are their proper and
immediate signifìcation».
34 Sn25, § 42.