ABSTRACT
In his Principi di scienza nuova, Vico (1999, 444) observes that philologists in good faith believe that natural languages signify 'a placito', that is, by convention. Languages form words through metaphors; and metaphors generally carry out a central role in all languages. According to Charles S. Peirce's typology of signs, metaphor is a type of icon. The Vichian notion of 'poetic logic' maintains that the human mind is predisposed to intuit and to express synthetically and holistically. The idea that man was created in the likeness of God involves a species-specific trait essential in the human being, that is, language. Writing, literary writing, is precisely that practice that redimensions, avoids, cringes from the arrogance of discourse, whether individual or collective, including Vico's 'boria delle nazioni' (arrogance of nations). The only dialectic action against arrogance with the same assertive nature as discourse is the transition from discourse to writing, the practice of writing: the Neutral of writing, the desire of writing.
