Pagina 22 - BCSV, XLI, 2

LEON POMPA 22
this criticism extensively elsewhere21, I shall not pursue my arguments
concerning it further here. In an associated criticism, however, which is
the matter of my present concern, Croce argued that the faculties Vico
ascribed to poetic man were so inadequate as a description of any kind
of human being as to amount to an abstraction. The first age of man,
he continued, was composed not of one philosophical category (i.e.
poetry), but of men of flesh and bone, who could not have had existed
on the basis of Vico’s description, which favoured his imaginative abil-
ities (poetry) at the expense of almost all the other faculties that Vico
allowed them. Although poetry may well have been prevalent, Croce
conceded,
all the others would have needed to function along with it, imagination and
intellect, perception and abstraction, will and morality, singing and counting22.
His over-all conclusion was that Vico had conflated one philosoph-
ical category, poetry, with the totality of abilities required, at the least,
to maintain man’s physical being.
Croce does not defend his list of the extra faculties that Vico should
have attributed to our basic human nature but it is evident that he
believes that poetic man would have had to possess all the faculties that
we ourselves have, including, crucially, the ‘powers of ratiocination’
(Croce’s ‘intellect’ and ‘abstraction’) that Vico denies. If he is correct in
this, it follows that Vico’s claim that human nature has become increas-
ingly more rational over the course traced by the ideal eternal history
cannot be accepted. And if this is so, it remains to be seen how much
of Vico’s great scheme can be salvaged.
VI. It is important, however, to note that Vico does not, in fact, limit
poetic man’s basic nature to the power of our creative imagination; he
asserts:
human nature, so far as it I like that of animals, carries with it this property,
that the senses are its sole way of knowing things23.
21 See my The Imaginative Universal, in this «Bollettino» XXXV (2005).
22 C ROCE, op. cit. p. 58. My italics.
23 Sn44, 394.