Politeja (Feb 2017)

Polityka poetycka Giambattisty Vica

  • Aleksandra Zając

DOI
https://doi.org/10.12797/Politeja.14.2017.46.15
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 14, no. 1(46)

Abstract

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Poetical politics of Giambattista Vico The article presents a part of Vico’s New Sience that is not so well known, but probably was a solid foundation of Vico’s famous concept of ricorsi. The thinker’s interest in poetical foundation of first societies is in a clear opposition with Cartesian and contractualist’s visions of philosophy and politics dominant in his time. The article shows how Vico’s connection to the renaissance tradition of poetical language gave him tools to explore the antiquity in a fruitfull way for philosophical and historical purposes. Nevertheless, it is partially also the tradition of Heidegger and Foucault, which makes Vico even more interesting to a contemporary reader. The article presents the poetical foundation of politics in concrete steps present in New Sience: the moment of foundation, religion of the first community, its language, morality, social structure, change, etc. It also explains epistemological means of human’s becoming historical and political: ingegno, metaphor, myth, universals, dictionary of humanity, Eternal Ideal History. As to be complete, it deals with the issue so vividly discussed during medieval and renaissance times, that is of Homer, evidencing the pride of scientists. This all brings to the attention of a reader a totally original vision of the beginnings of zoon politicon that was and is in the first instance animal symbolicum.

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