“Providential Divining”: Heresies and Controversies in Giambattista Vico’s Scienza Nuova

Abstract

In 1721, Pietro Metastasio, assessing Giambattista Vico’s De constantia iurisprudentis, observed that it was “a work in a pure Latin tongue, of high erudition and metaphysical acumen.” It was, he continued, notwithstanding its merits, badly received due largely to the fact that it was “taken to be a little too obscure” (Metastasio 1954, p. 24).¹ This charge of obscurity has been leveled at all of Vico’s work and survives down to the present day. It is, in fact, the only point where scholars of Vico are in complete agreement. Some have found Vico’s obscurity tantalizing, believing it to add to the special appeal of the New Science. In 1911, Benedetto Croce even went so far as to write that Vico’s obscurity was “itself the novelty and profundity of his concepts” (1973, p. 208). Others have seen it as a deliberate attempt to conceal unorthodox views, despite frequent claims by Vico himself that he was a devout son of the Catholic church. In his lifetime, Vico was believed to be an exemplary Catholic, one who, both in his private and professional life, stood for the Roman Catholic church against the more subversive elements of Naples and of Northern Europe. After his death, however, this reputation underwent a metamorphosis: in Naples, rumors began to circulate suggesting that Vico had deliberately obscured the New Science presumably because he feared ecclesiastical censure and the possibility of more serious consequences with the Roman Curia.