The Concept of History in G. B. Vico: The Return of Barbarism, Subjectivity and The Body

Abstract

The concept of history in Vico came out around the search of the historical particularity of peoples' lives. The Enlightenment had mixed the linearity of the historical event with the moral notion of the perfection of human consciousness. Vico, based on the notion of the Providence, built a non-deterministic notion of history and civil orders. The central thesis of this paper is that, in Vico's perspective, civil affairs are understood from the human historicity which is concretized in political orders. This order, of course, is unstable because the bases of civilization cross the intersubjective thresholds of fear, shame, and embodiment. The potential return of barbarism, the same that perhaps was brewing before our eyes today, could mean a radical transformation of the civil order and a exposition to other human and political experiences. Vico's philosophy of history, present in his New Science, is a powerful tool that helps to understand the uncertainty that the West suffers in the face of time and under its civilizing history today.