Robert C. Miner. Vico: Genealogist of Modernity.

Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2002. xvi + 215 pp. index. bibl. $37.50. ISBN: 0-268-03468-0.

In this compact book, which is not only an exegesis of Vico but also a plea for the Catholic religion, Miner intends to refute Benedetto Croce's and Isaiah Berlin's secular interpretation of Vichian philosophy. Miner acknowledges his debt to Alasdair MacIntyre, who should warrant an Aristotelian Vico, able to keep his ground in a memorable fight with Nietzsche. This explains the Nietzschean title, paradoxically adopted by Miner, who tries to prove that genealogy (pace Foucault) is not necessarily impious and can be used ad maiorem Dei gloriam. This ambitious program, clearly stated in the preface, is pursued in three parts, each divided into various chapters, written with ease and enthusiasm.

Part 1, "Humbling Modern Pride: Genealogy in the Early Vico," is a summary of Vico's early thought, founded on De nostri temporis studiorum ratione (1709) and De antiquissima Italorum sapientia (1710). Miner rejects Gadamer's view that Vico opposed modern science, and maintains that the anti-Cartesian orientation of De ratione does not entail a total condemnation of modernity. Miner's Vico, a far cry from Mark Lilla's antimodern thinker, disliked the French geometrical method, while showing a marked preference for Galileo's and Bacon's experimental method, viewed as an application of topical reasoning. According to Miner, the Vichian approach to mathematics is "an attempt to deflate its pretensions to absolute knowledge while preserving its value as a participation in metaphysical truth" (24). The verum-factum distinction, the gist of De antiquissima, is not a secular but a theological principle, grounded on Trinitarian premises.

Part 2, "The Development of Modern Historical Consciousness in the Diritto universale," illustrates Vico's brand of historicism, developed in the Diritto universale, published in 1720-21 and positively reviewed by the Calvinist Jean Leclerc. Miner acknowledges in the preface the help received from Giorgio Pinton, whose recently published translation of the Diritto universale is controversial. Miner, who believes that historical consciousness is the necessary premise of any genealogical project, and, following Nietzsche, makes a sharp distinction between historical spirit and historical scholarship, indirectly absolves Vico's questionable scholarship and condemns American philosophers for their lack of Historismus.

In his Diritto universale, Vico argues that "natural law has both a metaphysical origin in eternal truth and an historical origin in the customs of human society" (38). Thus Vico refused the position of the skeptics (Epicurus, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Spinoza, and Bayle) who, more or less explicitly, viewed justice as a human construct, based on fear and chance, and brought to perfection Grotius' system by showing that natural law is an essential part of "the historical development of customs and the laws that grow out of these customs" (37-38). Although he stresses the affinity of Vico's thought with Augustine's De civitate Dei, Miner is aware that "Vico's willingness to embrace distinctively modern notions of intelligibility and system, as well as his relative confidence in the ability of human reason to decipher the historical process, sets him apart from Augustine" (41).

In part 3 Miner shows how Vico developed the historicism of the Diritto universale into the genealogical discourse of the Scienza nuova (1725, 1730, 1744). At this point of his tour de force, Miner sets the stage for a contest between the two supposed champions of genealogical thought: the Catholic Vico and the secular Nietzsche. Such a contest takes place in the conclusion and is predictably won by Vico, which would make aficionados of Italian culture happy were it not for the fact that Miner, despite his ability to make intelligent remarks on details, was unable to produce a coherent and convincing intellectual history.

According to MacIntyre, man is "a teller of stories that aspire to truth" (A. MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study of Moral Theory [Notre Dame, 1981], 201). Miner is a case in point, since he has written a quixotic fiction that has no historical basis. He deals with abstractions such as Augustinianism and Cartesianism, and leaves out the great models of Christian thought offered by Arnauld and Malebranche, engaged in a dispute that shook the Catholic world in Vico's times (see D. Moreau, Deux cartesiens: la polemique entre Antoine Arnauld et Nicolas Malebranche [Paris, 1999]; idem, "The Malebranche-Arnauld Debate," in The Cambridge Companion to Malebranche, ed. S. Nadler [Cambridge, 2000], 87-111). Miner, who ignores that according to recent scholarship the Scienza nuova was considered heretical by the Holy Office and escaped condemnation only because Vico was judged a dimwit, bases his conclusions on literal interpretations of Vichian texts without taking into account the ecclesiastic censorship that stunted Italian culture and obliged writers to hide their real thoughts (see Church, Censorship and Culture in Early Modern Italy, ed. G. Fragnito, trans. A. Belton [Cambridge, 2001], 1-12).

GUSTAVO COSTA

Emeritus, University of California 

Berkeley