Pagina 30 - BCSV, XXXV, 2005

30 LEON POMPA
own nature is causally dependent upon another kind of mental ability, of
a conceptual nature, even if this evinces itself primarily in their powers
of sensory discrimination.
In fact, in a number of places46, Vico does imply that thè giants’ have
some conception of their own natures before transferring this onto Jove.
As I have argued, it is difficult to understand how thè giants could live
even such culturally impoverished lives as he allows them before thè cre­
ation of Jove had they not a grasp of some meanings and some sort of in-
ter-personal communication. Indeed, although Vico does not himself pur-
sue thè matter in this way, his whole conception of thè interdependence
of ideas and language, must apply as much to thè giants before they pro-
jected their own natures onto thè world as it does after they have done
so. This means that thè account of a poetic metaphysics in which reality
contains meaning cannot be, as Cantelli claims, an account of thè origin
of meaning itself. In this connection II Diritto universale is more helpful
when it comes to thè question of thè satisfaction of biological necessities.
That Vico recognised thè causai priority of thè satisfaction of biological
necessities over that of thè creation of cultural systems is shown in his as-
sertion that any human community must concern itself first with thè dis-
covery of water47. But in thè world of II Diritto universale, thè universale
fantastico does not exist, hence neither, as we have seen, does thè prob-
lem of recognising thè features of reality for what they are.
The foregoing points suggest that Vico’s account of thè growth of thè
divine language of thè gods is not an attempt to explain thè origins of
meaning as such but to explain thè beginnings of thè historical growth
of a particular form of culture, one in which religion plays a major part,
for which he had philological support, very different from that which he
could find in Hobbes and his other opponents.
Finally, it is worth noting that Vico does not describe poetic man, as
distinet from thè giants, as having only thè imaginative powers required
to create thè world of poetic metaphysics. At times, albeit infrequently,
he tempers his description of their mentality by allowing that men of such
vast imaginations have or can have some very limited powers of reason48.
What he fails to do when making these allowances, is to try to show how
any such powers affect their predominant mode of understanding and
behaviour, at least until thè much later period of thè heroic mentality49.
46,S'«44, SS 120, 122, 180-181.
47 De uno, chap. CXLVIII.
48 Sn44, SS 34, 706.
49 It seems clear that at this stage, at any rate, some sort of criticai rational faculties are