Pagina 35 - BCSV, XXXV, 2005

TUE IMAG1NATIVE UNIVERSAL 35
In thè hght of thè differences in thè contexts in which thè idea of top-
ics is introduced in thè two works, we can draw two conclusions. First,
there are two distinet conceptions of topics, thè earlier of which is re-
lated to a mode of argument and thought possible only in thè culture of
a developed society, while thè second of which is relevant to thè forma-
don of thought in a society of thè sort inhabited by poetic man. This is
thè concept of thè sensory topics59. Second, given thè differences be­
tween these two conceptions of topics, it is clear that in thè 1744 New
Science, Vico is not simply re-stating thè theory of human mind first ex-
pounded in De antiquissima. Despite thè lack of evidence of a continu-
ous re-thinking about thè concept of topics since that work, it would
seem that he had re-thought it and modified it in such a manner as to
render it applicable to thè question of thè origins of thought and lan­
guage. There is, however, an underlying theme common to both forms
of thè theory. This consists in thè unexceptionable claim that it is neces-
sary to formulate or create beliefs before subjecting them to criticai
thinking.
It is now necessary to ask how thè later concept of ingenium, taken
in its necessary association with thè sensory topics, would impinge on
thè account of ideas and language, criticised in thè earlier sections of this
article. The cruciai question here is whether it would suffice to show how
poetic man could have thè cognitive contact with thè reai world that is
necessary for his continued existence. In thèway in which Vico describes
thè sensory topics, it would seem that it would. In an important but dif-
ficult passage he writes: «The first founders of humanity applied them-
selves to a sensory topics, by which they brought together those proper­
ties or qualities or relations of individuai and species which were, so to
speak, concrete, and from these created their poetic genera»60. The im-
plication of thè first part of this remark is that they were able to sense
thè similarities and differences, «thè properties or qualities or relations
of individuai and species», which is what ingenium should enable us to
do, that exist in thè reai, i.e. thè «so to speak, concrete», world. But if a
language were to be built on thè basis of recognition of these features of
reality, which look very similar to features of a reality structured by Aris-
totelian universals, it would surely be a conceptual language. For what
an elementary conceptual language, primarily concerned with thè nat­
urai world in which we necessarily live, enables us to do is to communi­
cate information about thè various kinds of properties, thè drinkable,
59 Sn44, §§494-498.
60 Ibid., § 495.