ABSTRACT
I hope it is clear by now that Vico sees the idea of natural law emerging from reflection on the values and mores that persisted and developed during a community’s history, and that he sees that development and persistence driven by eloquent speech in practical (sometimes dramatic) circumstances. In short, the natural law was argued about long before it could be argued from. Vico, however, did not see this historical process as an unmitigated blessing, even though he posited a providence that seemed to direct it. Unlike Hegel, Vico sees that this continuous conflict between social forces and the arguments on the various sides of those forces, exacted a price. The conatus towards equity, and the arguments that advanced or contested equity, gradually weakened the consensus of meaning that the community had originally assumed. The corruption of language that can attend the advance of equity or defence of inequity Vico terms “the barbarism of reflection”. Vico describes this time as the “ultimate civil malady”:
[P]eople have, like beasts, become accustomed to each individual thinking solely of his own individual utilities…. They live hideous and beastly lives in the deepest solitude of spirit and will, where scarcely two can agree. With their continuing factions and civil wars, these peoples must turn their cities int forests and the forests into human dens (NS 1106).
