Pagina 49 - BCSV, XXXV, 2005

THE IMAGINAT1VE UNIVERSA!. 49
see what a generic character can be, if it is not thè character common to
thè particular members of thè genus or kind. John and Harry cannot be
particular chiefs of war because they are identical with thè particular re­
ality, Godfrey, for this would result in thè identity of all three tout court.
There would thus be no respect in which thè being of Harry and John
as chiefs ofwar was constituted by their identity with thè being of God­
frey. The only way in which this can be made coherent is by Godfrey’s
being both a particular and, in virtue of that, also being a generic char­
acter, so that John and Harry in being identical with thè particular God­
frey are also identical with his generic character. But if a generic charac­
ter is simply thè character common to a class, it cannot derive its nature
as a generic character from some particular which is a member of that
class. This identification of thè particular who is Godfrey with thè gener­
ic character of thè being of a chief of war simply involves thè conflation
of two entirely different kinds of things: thè particulars which can and
must share generai characteristics and thè generai characteristics with­
out which theywould have no being whatsoever. In fact, despite Verene’s
attempt to explain thè imaginative universal in this way, it looks as
though, while abandoning thè references to antonomasia in his officiai
explanation of thè imaginative universal, Vico would have done little
more than give thè generai characteristic, being a chiefofwar, thè name
of an outstanding example of a relevant person, in this case Godfrey,
which simply re-introduces thè idea of antonomasia. So unless it is shown
how any particular, be it an ideal portrait or otherwise, can be identical
with a generai character which is not thè character shared by members
of a genus, thè whole account involves a petitio principii. The difficulty
with which Verene has thus failed to deal is that of understanding how
Vico’s ‘identity of predication’ can be characterised without falling back
upon thè mediation of a generai concept or abstract universal and its nec-
essary correlative, thè instances of shared generai characteristics or prop-
erties which fall under it. But this is precisely thè difficulty that Croce
criticised Vico for failing to resolve.
In a further attempt to clarify how to understand this identity of pred­
ication without invoking thè abstract universal, Andrea Battistini has
suggested that Vico’s identity of predication involves thè coincidence of
thè predicate with its subject or, as he states it in a more metaphysical
formulation, thè perfect identification of thè individuai with a personi-
fied archetype100. But, if we take thè first formulation, it is impossible for
a predicate to coincide with a subject, since thè whole point of a predi-
100 G . V ico , Opere, cit., voi. II, p. 1491,