ABSTRACT
For the principles of the solution of the speculative issue Giambattista Vico does not need to go beyond the circle of the principles he has already established. The concepts by means of which he has already resolved the problem of time-ideal process now enable him to resolve the problem of the unity or circularity of philosophy and philology which constitutes the essence of his 'arte critica'; or the method of the 'New Science'. The 'certum', that is the cultural residuum, the documents to which philology addresses itself, appears in the first instance as nature. The 'certum' is recovered from nature by the perception that it is not 'certum' but 'factum'. Vico takes care, in the exposition of this concept of the 'factum' with which the 'certum' of history is convertible, to distinguish it from another kind of 'factum' toward which the human spirit must, in his view, assume an attitude of immedicable scepticism.
