Pagina 55 - BCSV, XXXV, 2005

THE IMAGINATIVE UNIVERSAL 55
ways, such as those expressing items involved in a species-genus relation;
while thè whole idea of ‘thè same communicative context’ needs con-
siderable elaboration. But this is not thè place in which to go into these
further questions nor, I believe, do they affect thè basic principle: that it
is thè distinction between form and content or syntax and semantics in
language that makes thè identity of meaning essential for concepts pos­
sible.
With this in mind, it is now possible to see that thè problem with thè
imaginative universal is that thè naturai figurative language, thè language
of signs with naturai relations to certain ideas, contains no such distinc­
tion as that between semantics and syntax and, hence, no way of pre-
serving identity of meaning. This does not mean that thè signs in a figu­
rative language could not be given meanings, but this could be done on­
ly in virtue of thè existence of a prior set of meanings dependent upon a
language with syntactical structures. But in that case, of course, thè mode
of thought expressed through thè poetic language would cease to be thè
first form of mind on which all others are dependent112.
The question that must therefore be addressed is why, if this is cor-
rect, thè language of poetic man cannot preserve thè identity of predi­
cation that Vico himself saw as essential. The answer, I suggest, is that it
is precisely because it is meant to be a language with naturai relations to
thè ideas in question. The language of poetic man is described as being
primarily a visual language and, more fundamentally, one of imitation.
The gestures, reai objects, hieroglyphics and so on, of this language are
presented as imitations of thè ideas they are meant to express. But imi­
tation cannot be thè basis of a language, simply because nothing which
is used as an imitation is, purely of itself, an imitation113. Gestures, for
112 It is perhaps significant, though one cannot place too much weight on it, that, as men-
tioned earlier, Vico describes thè image ofJove as thè first human thought (Sn44, § 447). But
Jove, or an image ofJove, is not, of course, a thought but thè object of a thought. Possibly all
that Vico means, however, is that thè imaginary Jove, thè imaginative universal, is thè object
expressed in thè first human thoughts, thè emphasis being more on thè fact that Jove is thè
first god to be invented and, therefore, thè origin of thè theogony whereby humanity as such
develops.
115 In an interesting discussion of Verene’s view, Professor Alasdair Macintyre makes a
somewhat similar point. «To say that an image functions as a universal is always to say that
thè image is being used and interpreted in one way rather than another, not only in respect of
its mode of application to particulars, but also in respect of what image it is taken to be. Any
pictorial image, a picture, say, of an eagle in ascending flight, can be construed as an image of
a bird, of a predator, of flight, of ascending, of an eagle, or of some or all of these. It is in how
it is construed as well as in what it is pictorially that it functions as an image of, and not just
as a physical object. But as it is with pictures, so also it is with descriptions. An image in words