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Giambattista Vico Vico about Rationalism Vico Quotes Vico about Catholicism






giambattista vico by woodpig
giambattista vico There were serious adversaries of the Dictates of Reason ('rationalism') as unpurpously designed in Enlightenment by 'catholic' priest Descartes. Descartes wanted to save catholicism by preventing a fight between church and science. But that way Descartes further opened the door to a rule based subreality (Rational Paradigm around 'ratio') that was quite empty (a door already opened by catholicism to a subreality based on 10 rules, around 'god') and led the western human herd further away from intuition (common sense).

Giambattista Vico (1668, Naples, 1744): opposes the Enlightenment credo that cuts the ties with (bodily) common sense: (human) 'Reason dictates Nature'.
The early Nietzsche of 'Christian Science': The order of ideas follows the order of things; Truth is an Act '.

End of Enlightenment 'rationalism' was adopted by the Roman Catholic Church (since Council of Chalcedon a body mind split religion). Now opposing 'rationalism meant' attacking THE church by denying the body mind split . And thus meant leaving any ambitions in a 'science' thad had become 'analytic' (rational).

Giambattista Vico saw reality as sum of behaviors and 'mind' as hallucination of Descartes, and Vico may be considered as the spark behind Thomas Kuhn's idea 'paradigms'. Vico relates 'truth' to behavior (experience) and not to 'ideas'.
Vico's position is that 'analysis' with the logic 'ratio' is useful for 'dead' physics, but that 'reason' is an infantile steering wheel for complex 'life' (alife physics) (in the 21st century perfectly demonstrated by BP causing a disaster in the Mexican Gulf with by 'ratio' dictated oil drilling undersea).
Vico argues that those who are only trained to investigate nature with logic "lack intuition of human nature and sensus communis. And are unable to "engage in the life of the COMMUNITY, to conduct themselves with sufficient wisdom and prudence" ; and fail to use respect and passion.
The main reason that Vico's work failed to gain an audience was paradigm paralysis in 'science'. Vico's fellow scientists all looked with 'rational' eyes (used a distinct conceptual scheme in their Rational Paradigm) and only experienced the consistent views of Giambattista Vico as dangerously absurd ('rationally') . Vico's main point (one that makes sense): logic (like 'rational' logic) invites to puzzle with 'value', but contains no value in itself. Vico might have underestimated the ability of logic to create worlds of its own (paradigms BASED on logic, instead of paradigms simulated with logic), but Vico made a (common sense) point in claiming that by far most wisdom is found in 'history' and is researched with 'rethoric' (= evoking emotions by juggling with language, without any prejudices).
Indirectly Giambatista Vico stated: catholicism brought the skills of Alexander the Great (the Cursed) , but also his unemotional dual supremacy 'ethics' (Master, slave) with little 'value'.

Vico's view of life totally contrasted with 'rationalism'. Vico's common sense views (sensus communis) were not 'understood' ('rational' notion) in 'rational' logic, and professor Vico was simply ignored by 'rationalists'. The common sense Vico was seen as a "stranger" by his 'rational' collegues, and "quite unknown" in his native city. In many ways fundamentally ignored like much later Friedrich Nietzsche. Vico as Professor of Language (Rhetoric) realized the extreme danger of juggling with 'rational words', with only 'rational' ethical borders. Like later Nietzsche realized the danger of fundamental German Protestantism fanatically using words in 'translated' bible texts to defend 'christian' BEHAVIOR.












Vico about 'rationalism'

Vico 'saw' that Descartes' mind body split killed intuition. He was proven right, but had the bad luck that in the meantime the Roman Catholic church had adopted 'rationalism' as ideal 'house doctrine'. Now everyone who doubted 'rationalism' was banned by the church, and completely ignored or ridiculed.

Vico argues that to introduce geometrical method (rationalism) into practical life is 'like trying to go mad with the rules of reason', trying to go by a straight line through the puzzles of life, as though human affairs were not ruled by emotion and chance.
Again if you want, a indirect attack of THE Church.

Vico considers it a mistake to look for an unchanging human essence in reality.
Vico rejects a static natural law which implies a fixed human nature or purpose in reality.

Giambattista Vico died in poverty and obscurity in 1744, about 1 age after Descartes ( The power of the Catholic Church was great, and its wealth enormous). Vico's common sense world view was an early version of Nietzsche's view of knowledge and Thomas Kuhn's paradigms, realizing an ESSENTIAL (and very arrogant) mistake in thinking and being ignored.

In the 21st century Vico's TOTALLY different common sense view on life is being rediscovered. Giambattista Vico is at present described as: one of the first modern thinkers to formulate in "New Science" a philosophy of mythology and to base both philosophical and historical knowledge on a conception of narration. You risked a life in poverty when opposing 'rationalism', or better when opposing a society that considered fantasizing (the 'spiritual' activity 'thinking') as working AND as a way to reveal truth. The pope bases his power and being infallible on his ability to fantasize. Even before the reformation rationalism spread all over Catholic Europe.


Humor: 'Rationality' was practiced in most pure shape in the by Catholicism hated Protestantism. And the same 'rationality' made catholic fundamentals murder leading protestants all over Protestant Europe. Protestantism in itself did not chase away common sense and did not cause Capitalism, but that was 'rationality'











giambattista vico
Vico Quotes

Read some of Vico's words, that question the hallucination 'reason':

...that the world of civil society has certainly been made by men, and that its principles are therefore to be found within the modifications of our own human mind. Whoever reflects on this cannot but marvel that the philosophers should have bent all their energies to the study of the world of nature, which, since God made it, He alone knows; and that they should have neglected the study of the world of nations, or civil world, which, since men had made it, men could come to know.

...This aberration was a consequence of that infirmity of the human mind by which, immersed and buried in the body, it naturally inclines to take notice of bodily things, and finds the effort to attend to itself too laborious; just as the bodily eye sees all objects outside itself but needs a mirror to see itself...

Two quotes of Giambattista Vico showing that Vico considered 'mind' as brain process (bodily):
(1) Common sense is judgment without reflection, shared by an entire class, an entire nation, or the entire human race.
(2) [...] languages: words are carried over from bodies and from the properties of bodies to express the things of the mind and spirit.






















Vico and Catholicism

Vico opposes the standpoint of Catholic Christianity by always distinguishing 'the Hebrews' from the 'gentiles' (here Vico meant all of Judean Christianity , Judean Zoroastrians).

Vico questioned rationalism as abstract theory of cause and effect. Vico believed that man can only grasp behavior, and that local truth = local behavior. Vico uses the notion 'God' when pointing to 'evolution'. Man can learn from 'history' as stage in evolution of human behavior.

Vico's view in a nutshell:
Catholic Christianity takes [Hellenist Israelian) Hebrew culture as normative, as standard to which 'the pagans' should be compared. And in that way stimulates a continuing judgment contra 'gentiles' who like Persia opposed Hellenism. In Catholic Christianity 'pagan' culture is seen as 'evil', because of absence of the 'spirit' God who is considered to be 'good'.



Pagan = unknown animal. The term 'Pagan' comes from latin 'Paganus, a Roman variant of the Hebrew notion 'Gentile'.
'Pagans' in Roman view were tricky apes living outside the influence of Roman settlements. The 'white'Romans REALLY saw coloured 'pagans' (for them mainly African or Asian) as inhuman. That's why Romans enjoyed animal fights between slaves and wild animals, 'amazones' and wild animals, etcetera. The Romans (following the Hellenist Greek biologer Aristotle) proudly saw themselves as 'spiritual humans', instead of as armoured egoist murderous 'human apes'.
Slaves could 'upgrade' to 'Roman', by adapting to Roman ethics.

Quotes (Paul Hazard):
Paul Hazard: If Italy had listened to Giambattista Vico, [..] would not our intellectual destiny have been different? Our eighteenth-century ancestors would not have believed that all that was clear was true; but on the contrary that "clarity is the vice of human reason rather than its virtue," because a clear idea is a finished idea. They would not have believed that reason was our first faculty, but on the contrary that imagination was. . . .

Oscar Wilde: Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason. "

Vico influenced people like Goethe, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Diderot, Coleridge, James Joyce, Thomas Hobbes, Spinoza, David Hume, Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Nietzsche, Max Horkheimer, Heidegger, Habermas, Lyotard, ..

Henk Tuten


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