Pagina 38 - BCSV, XXXV, 2005

38 LEON POMPA
have beliefs about it is something more and it is difficult to think what
this could be, other than holding certain things about thè gods to be true
and others to be false. These assertions need not - indeed, in thè case of
poetic man they cannot - be made in thè conceptual language appro­
priate to thè third age, but there must nevertheless be some way in which
they can be made and this must presuppose some grasp of thè concepts
of truth and falsity. Not only does Vico maintain that poetic man held
certain beliefs to be true, but he goes further and maintains that poetic
man was incapable of holding false beliefs, since, given that thè elements
of poetic language stand in a ‘naturai relation’ to thè ideas they signify -
largely some sort of imitative gestures, objects and pictures - they can­
not fail to signify these ideas correctly. This, in fact, is part of his reason
for holding that thè poetic myths cannot fail to be ‘true narrations’68. But
this reveals a serious misunderstanding of thè concept of truth, for thè
concept of truth is internally linked to that of falsity: to take something
to be true is equivalent to taking its denial to be false, while to take some­
thing to be false is to take its denial to be true69.
The problem is, in fact, more serious than this, for to deny something
is equivalent to taking it not to be true. Hence thè question of how nega-
tion can figure in a poetic language must be addressed. Vico himself says
nothing about negation but it is impossible to see how thè concept of
negation can arise as part of a language based upon naturai connections
with ideas70. Since any element of such a language, a certain gesture, say,
is a ‘something’, i.e. will have certain characteristics of its own, it is not
possible for it to relate naturally, i.e. by resemblance or imitation, to a
something that is not a ‘thing’, i.e. to something without certain relevant
there is such a world, this would amount to imagining and believing that there is such a world.
But this would not be compatible with Vico’s view that we should fìnd it strange that, when
poetic man imagined that there was such a world, he more or less automatically believed that
there was, which implies a distinction between imagining and believing.
68 Sn44, § 401.1 shall discuss thè problems associated with thè idea of a language which
bears naturai relations with thè ideas it expresses further below. But see also ibid., § 209, which
is discussed in thè next section.
69 That Vico did, indeed, fail to recognise this is shown by his claiming that it is because
«barbarians lack reflection, which is thè mother of falsehood» that «thè first heroic Latin po-
ets sang true histories» (Sn44, § 817). But reflection is supposed to be more or less totally ab-
sent from thè poetic mentality, hence so would any idea of falsity.
Bertrand Russell, for example, was plagued by thè problem of accounting for negation
via some feature of thè phenomenal world from his very first attempts to formulate thè phi-
losophy of logicai atomism. It was stili a matter of great concern when he wrote his final ma­
jor philosophical work. See B. RUSSELL, Human Knowledge: Its Scope And Limits, New York,
1948, pan II, chapter IX. For an analysis of thè defects of his attempted solutions, see A. J.
A yer, Negation, in «The Journal of Philosophy» XLIX (1952) 26.