Pagina 18 - BCSV, XLI, 2

LEON POMPA 18
Grotius, Pufendorf and Selden, whose theories of an original state of
nature were all vitiated, he claimed, by their failure to understand one
of his cardinal theories: that the nature of things lies in the way they
have arisen and developed historically7, in other words, their failure to
appreciate that man was an essentially historical being. Vico did not
dissent from the natural law theorists’ view that there had been an orig-
inal state of nature, though he did criticize them severally, giving spe-
cific reasons for disputing particular features in their accounts8. But
their common and by far most serious fault was that they had failed to
take «their start from the beginnings of the gentes, where their subject
matter starts»9. Thus, they had assumed that the men of their original
state of nature were those of their own times, i.e. «men enlightened by
fully developed natural reason», a mistake which had led them to a
whole series of conceptual errors in their interpretations of ancient law.
Vico’s claim was not that there has never been an original state of
nature but that none of the sorts of state described by the natural law
theorists could possibly have been an originating state.
III. Before discussing the main features of Vico’s own account of an orig-
inating state, it is necessary to enquire why he felt that he needed to
establish an ideal eternal history. One reason was that it would provide
him with an outline of the shape of the past. This would act as a guide to
make it possible to interpret all available empirical evidence in such a
way as to trace the historical course by which from a genuine, or at least
credible, originating state, the civil, political and juridical structures and
forms of thought of his own times had arisen. Plainly, if such an enter-
prise could be achieved it would give us not only a knowledge of our own
nature but a better understanding of our own and past times.
But it would not have been sufficient for the overarching theory
merely to provide us with a guide to the past, no matter how intelligi-
ble the reading of human history to which it might give rise. If this were
its only status, it would then be an open question why anybody should
accept it as the correct guide rather than other potential guides. A
7 Ivi, 147: «The nature of institutions is nothing but their coming into being (nasci-
mento) at certain times and in certain guises. Whenever the time and guise are thus and
so, such and not otherwise are the institutions that come into being».
8 Ivi, 395-397.
9 Ivi, 394.