Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-fbnjt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-04T16:25:50.113Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

2 - Towards Giambattista Vico’s common sense

from Part I - ‘Superior’ and ‘inferior’ thinking and knowing

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2016

Ivana Marková
Affiliation:
University of Stirling
Get access

Summary

This chapter traces historical roots of common sense from Aristotle, and through the scientific revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Ideas associated with the scientific revolution gave rise to new perspectives in arts, artisanships and technology, all these influencing the emergence of social sciences. The chapter focuses on the work of the Italian scholar Giambattista Vico who, in many respects, can be viewed as a precursor of the idea of the dialogical mind although Tagliacozzo emphasizes that Vico’s ideas had no influence until the nineteenth century. If we find traces of Vico’s ideas in the creators of the dialogical mind ranging from Herder, Hamann, Humboldt through to Cassirer, Bakhtin and Moscovici among others, this shows the originality and foresight of Vico’s oeuvre as a whole. Already in the early eighteenth century he viewed natural and human sciences as being of different kinds. For Vico, human beings humanize nature by acting on it, by establishing communities, social institutions, traditions and political organizations. It is common sense that forms the basis of historicity. From his critique of the Cartesian method, Vico developed a modern conception of common sense based on verum factum, the logic of imagination, language and ethics.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Dialogical Mind
Common Sense and Ethics
, pp. 39 - 61
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2016

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×