If the French enlighteners were optimistic about the future, they believed in the good beginning of man; they knew who was the enemy of science and who hindered the advance towards the realm of Reason; the thinkers of Italy were in a different situation.

The time of the Renaissance, which gave the ideal to Europe, was replaced by a socio-political decline, which could not but affect the original concept of history.

G. Vico (1668-1744), who represented world history as a recurring circular movement of all peoples from a period of savagery to civilization and then a return to the original state, which is the starting point for a new ascent. (See: "Foundations of a new science about the common nature of nations" M., K., 1994)

J. Vico worries about why the great cultures of Greece and Rome fell into decay. The solution of this question, he begins with an understanding of the essence of human nature. The fact that human nature is originally social is beyond doubt, but that it is absolutely virtuous, as Enlightenment thinkers claim - this conclusion is doubtful.

In favor of the social nature of man speaks the fact that all peoples, without exception, have a certain religion, enter into marriages, carry out burial.

As for the second thesis, from the point of view of Vico, a person is neither kind nor evil, although he is characterized by selfishness and lust for power, greed and the desire for profit. And only Divine Providence guides him to true path, encourages mercy and encourages goodness and justice.

J. Vico analyzes historical material from the life of various peoples and identifies three main epochs in their history: the time of the Gods, the time of the Heroes and the time of the People.

Each time has its own nature, customs, law, language and state.

The Time of the Gods is a state of savagery and unrestrained bestial freedom. Possessing a weak mind, but a rich imagination, people created a pagan religion that curbed their savagery, accepted the power of an authority that united priestly and monarchical power, discovered natural law for themselves.

The first wisdom of the pagans was myths as a regulation of the life of society and its true history.

In the era of Heroes, the family of power of authority grows, taking under its protection representatives of other clans and tribes. Representatives of the power of authority have become the princes of the human race. But the treatment of the nobles with the plebeians led to conflicts, which were partly resolved by the efforts of the state in the form of an aristocratic republic. Natural law was seen as the law of force limited by the efforts of religion. The language of this era was the language of the "heroic signs" of coats of arms.

The Age of Man begins when the plebeians realize that in their human nature they are equal to the nobles, and then they create a civil class. As a result of a mixture of natural law and civil law, people's republics arose with their own legislation. The people's republics, having destroyed the power of authority, took the first step towards their own destruction. into place people's republic anarchy came - the worst of all tyrannies, for it demonstrated unbridled freedom, no different from the primitive bestial freedom of the era of the Gods. As a result of anarchy, the people return to their original state of savagery.


All 3 forms of social status in real history peoples are presented in the form of various modifications, which does not negate the general scenario.

From the point of view of G. Vico, the movement from one era to another is not a movement in a circle. This is the state of a spiral with its own amplitude of oscillation; the higher the rise, the deeper the fall. And the examples of Greece, Rome, Europe.

The reason for this Return is rooted in the nature of man. Pursuing his own interests, a person can reach the state of a beast, and in this his will is manifested. Although the same will can move a person to establish a higher order. The strength of the will is such that people can not only retard development, but also reverse it, because at the beginning people are content with only the necessary, then they pay attention to the useful, notice the convenient, amuse themselves with pleasure, become corrupted by luxury, go crazy, wasting their property.

“The nature of a nation corresponds to the nature of a person: at first it is cruel, then harsh, soft, refined, and finally dissolved.”

A person remains selfish, cares about himself more than about others. But he is also inclined towards good, although not without help from above. Therefore, the essence of man is special and it makes no sense to extend the laws of nature to society and man, as the philosophy of the Enlightenment does.

J. Vico is a rationalist, but not of the Cartesian school. His rationalism gravitates towards the empirical tradition, at the origins of which are T. Hobbes, J. Locke. (See: "Leviathan", "Two treatises on management"

The mind is not given in a finished and complete form. It is the result of the development of man and the culture of his people. G. Vico was one of the first who made an attempt to see in history epochs connecting each other in time, each of which had intrinsic value and necessity.


§4. I. Herder and his history as the progress of "humanity".

Of interest is the work of Johann Gottfried Herder (1744 - 1803) "Ideas for the philosophy of the history of mankind", where he makes an attempt to comprehend the history of mankind, to reveal the laws community development.

Initial thesis: “The philosophy of history is a part of the Philosophy of nature, and therefore the basic laws of nature are the laws of the development of society,” for every existence in the greatest and smallest is based on the same Laws. But each creation has its own world, which provides the peculiarity of its existence.

Sharing Leibniz's doctrine of monads, Herder expresses the idea of ​​the self-sufficiency of nature, which, while maintaining its unity, provides life in the diversity of its manifestations from stone to crystal, from crystal to plants, from them to animals, and from animals to man - this is the path of development of Nature. where the operation of the Law of ascending forces (which implies action) is manifested. And the law of domination of the basic form (which finds its embodiment in man).

The great confluence of lower organic forces gave rise to the soul or spirit of man, he rose above the body and became its master. According to Herder, the essence of the human spirit is humanity. It includes: will, reason, ethical and aesthetic feelings, philanthropy and justice, in total making up humanity.

However, humanity is not innate, but an acquired quality. Initially, it exists only as a possibility. This possibility can be realized only through education on the basis of the best traditions.

Thus, Herder's philosophy of history is based on 2 principles: the action of "organic forces" and tradition as a factor in education.

Nature gave man the ages of life, and among them childhood and youth, set aside for the formation of the mind, the humane spirit and the human way of life.

The diversity of the human environment does not exclude, but presupposes, first of all, the solution of one problem - the problem of humanity. Everything else is decided from a position of humanity.

Raises Herder and the problem of communication. The formation of humanity is excluded outside of communication. Through communication and education, a person becomes a person.

Considers Herder and the possibilities of culture as a factor in education, the role of language as an organizer abstract thinking; the role of religion with its focus on the likeness of man and God, for the position obliges.

Among the unnamed factors of historical progress, the family and the state occupy a special place. The first personifies the power of authority, the second - the authority of power. Unfortunately, both the family and the state are not always on top, as evidenced by practice and comparative analysis existing forms board. Despotism in the family and tyranny in society are based not on reason, but on unbridled feelings.

Only those who by all means develop the spirit of humanity in themselves constantly renew their appearance. This applies not only to people, but to entire nations. And if they have stopped in their development, this means that they have ceased to use the mind for its intended purpose.

The creative power of the mind is able to transform chaos into order. So, Herder's philosophy of history differs from the concepts of other enlighteners. In her context The World History appears as a complex system that resolves the contradictions of chaos and order through the self-improvement of "organic forces" and the achievement of a certain stage of humanity in the form of humanity. Not everything is strictly sustained in Herder's concept, but the pathos of the idea of ​​history as a progress of humanity captivates.

§ 5. Hegel on the "cunning" of the World mind.

The philosophy of Hegel (1770-1831) is the pinnacle of classical rationalism. "Reason rules the world" - the creed of Hegel's philosophy, which is revealed in all the works of the German thinker, including on the pages of "Lectures on the Philosophy of History".

From Hegel's point of view, the essence of the world, its substance is the "absolute idea" - the impersonal world mind, which in its development generates all the diversity of the world, recognizing itself as the subject of action.

All the existing diversity of the world, including the social one, is contained only potentially and only through the efforts of the world mind, it acquires its reality, its history.

As for the World Mind, being a substance, it does not need external material, but "takes everything from itself, acting as its own prerequisite and ultimate goal."

The first step in the formation of an absolute idea is nature. She has no history. Only through its negation does the absolute idea become a "Thinking Spirit", which continues its self-liberation at the level of subjective, objective and absolute spirit, demonstrating in each case its measure of freedom. Having passed the stages of individual and social development, it in the status of world history becomes a way of self-knowledge of the World Mind. Thus, the philosophy of history according to Hegel is a reflection of the Absolute Idea - the World Mind in the forms of law, morality and morality. Morality provides the norms of due, morality demonstrates the existence at the level of the family, civil society and the state. As for law, it determines the measure of freedom, providing the regulation of social relations.

Family - a way of reproduction of society and an institution of education. Civil society- this is a state where "everyone is an end, and all the rest is a means", but everyone is equal before the law. State - highest form community of people with a focus on achieving harmony between the individual and the public.

What “should be” is contained in the essence of the World Mind - the absolute idea and “is carried out with necessity at every stage of the development of history. From Hegel's point of view, philosophy should "contribute to the understanding that the real world is as it should be, that the true good, the universal world mind, is a force capable of realizing itself. Its content and implementation is the world history of mankind.

The real is a proper, necessary manifestation of the World Mind. The unreasonable is deprived of the status of the real, although it remains existing. From these positions, "reconciliation" with reality is achieved through knowledge, affirmation of the positive and overcoming the negative in the process of realizing the ultimate goal.

But if all events developed in accordance with the logic of self-knowledge of the World Mind, then they would serve only as an illustration of its self-development. However, history is only "virtually" contained in the absolute spirit, and is realized through the will and actions of people, due to their interests. By pursuing private interests, mobilizing his will and investing all his strength to achieve his goal, a person becomes what he is, that is, a concrete, definite personality of his society.

Against the background of private aspirations, the common goal, love for the Fatherland, sacrifice, make up a meager amount. History turns into an arena of wayward aspirations, where statesmanship and individual virtue are sacrificed. But if you rise above this picture, you can see that the results of people's actions turn out to be different than the goals they pursued, because in parallel with their actions, something is happening that is hidden from their eyes, but this something edits the results of their activities. In this Hegel sees the "cunning" of the World mind, which, one way or another, puts everything in its place.

The rigidity of the assertion that people are a means (instrument) of the World mind does not bother Hegel, because he believes that the presence in every person of the eternal and unconditional - morality and religiosity sets participation in the World mind, ensures their self-worth.

So, having made the substance - the World Mind an object of development, Hegel introduced into history processality and irreversibility, formation and alienation, for only in self-development the spirit (world mind) cognizes itself and comes to the awareness of its freedom. Empirical history, as the sum of various factors, acquired the idea of ​​freedom, which could be realized only in concrete forms. The coincidence of the logical and historical, which was based on the identity of being and thinking, made possible the philosophical consideration of history, the main "hero" of which was the mind, knowing itself through philosophy.

The dialectic of the individual and the general allowed Hegel to avoid the situation of being a hostage of historical concrete facts, and not to let the "idea" go into the realm of pure speculation.

And although world history is not an “arena of happiness”, but rather a picture of grief over the evil done, the assertion of the priority of reason removes the problem of the omnipotence of evil, because truth and good ultimately coincide and this unity is the guarantor of the victory of good.

Our actions, whether good or evil, are conditioned by the manifestation of freedom. But freedom is not given, as the French Enlightenment claims. According to Hegel, freedom is acquired through education and disciplined knowledge. And in this sense, freedom is not an obligation, but a certain "disciplinary matrix" that implies a certain measure of responsibility. This is another indirect evidence of Hegel's faith in the victory of good and the march of history as the self-development of the World Mind.

The significance of the Neapolitan thinker Giambattista Vico (1668-1744) for modern cultural studies primarily lies in the fact that he outlined the originality of cultural methods of research and the subject of research. Vico's criticisms of the Cartesian method give us an idea of ​​the considerable distance separating him from the mainstream of thought of the time. The dangerous convergence of Cartesianism with practice, according to the Neapolitan thinker, means blocking any possibility of developing jurisprudence, politics, social sciences. Striving to become a universal methodology, Cartesianism does not get along well with the sciences of society and morality, with poetry, art, and rhetoric.

The thinkers surrounding Viko directed their efforts to the search for Truth in the surrounding world, he also offered to explain the world created by man, that is, the world of culture. For a person, Vico argued, the truth is only what is done by him, and what is done by him is the truth. “Verum (true) and factum (done), writes Vico, are mutually convertible. This epistemological principle, identifying the true with the done, was for the scientist the basis for a radical division of reality into two worlds - the world of nature, created by God, and the civil world (the world of culture, the world of nations), created by people. Thus, in the teachings of Vico, a clear boundary was outlined between the natural sciences that study the relatively unchanging nature physical world, and the humanities, which study social evolution through empathic penetration, for which scientific and critical clarification of texts is necessary, but insufficient condition knowledge.

In order to carry out a holistic knowledge of the world created by people, a union of philosophy and philology is necessary, the Neapolitan professor believed. Although "philosophical wisdom" for Vico is undoubtedly the true form of knowledge, he also pays tribute to poetic creativity. Accordingly, they singled out two forms of comprehension of the world: poetic And philosophical. The poet is the first thinker of the human race. In his opinion, it was feelings and imagination that were the force that laid the foundations of human culture. Fantasy, imagination were the first form of development human environment reality. The product of this first human mental activity was myths, images, symbols, signs. Myths, just like artistic creativity people, there is no empty fun, entertainment. Myths, writes Vico, "were a way of thinking for entire peoples." He reveals a certain sequence in the formation of the culture of mankind: “the first peoples, as it were, the children of the Human Race, first of all founded the World of Arts; subsequently the Philosophers, who appeared after many years, therefore, as if the old men of the nations, founded the world of Sciences; thus Culture was completely completed.

In the work “On the Ancient Wisdom of the Italians,” Vico recalls that in the phenomenon of man, the act of self-knowledge is important, which constitutes other elements. Is it permissible, Vico noted, “with an irrepressible zeal for the natural sciences, to neglect the laws of human behavior, passions, their refraction in civil life, properties of vices and virtues, characteristic properties different ages, gender differences, tribal characteristics, types of rationality ... All these are the reasons why science, the most important for the state, is less developed than others and of little interest to anyone. In this way, Viko, as it were, outlined a program of cultural anthropological research, which sounds quite modern, but at one time he was not heard.

Viko stands up for a holistic human world and tries to bridge the gap that has formed in rational philosophy between real person and his interpretation as a rational being. The essence of man, according to Vico, is wisdom, as a synthesis of will and intellect, consciousness and soul (while the vast majority of theories of that time proclaimed intelligence).

His main work, The Foundations of a New Science of the Common Nature of Nations, aims to understand the history of mankind, its course and vectors of development. Vico conducts a logical analysis of human culture, its various forms and manifestations in order to know the meaning of history in general, and not of a particular era. The past of mankind, he rightly notes, is told not only by human deeds, but also by human thoughts, ideas, objectified in language, legends, and myths. The analysis of human ideas in his book is a method of research, but not a subject of research. The subject of the study is the world of nations built by people. This world is a successive change of epochs, constituting a certain cycle, after which the next cycle begins, in which history reveals repetitions similar to those that took place in the previous cycle. Each era is valuable in itself, because it has its own "logic" and its own charm. Vico borrowed the name of these eras from the ancient Egyptians - this is the age of the gods, the age of heroes and the age of people. Such a history he calls the Ideal History of the Eternal Laws, "according to which the deeds of all Nations move in their origin, progress, state, decline and end."

Throughout the "New Science" Vico persistently illustrates the coincidence of phenomena and causes, indicating the repetition in culture. Replacing each other, epochs confirm the tireless course of time. This Natural Progressive Movement, which nations go through during their lives, is devoid of any value coloring in Vico, he is not talking about progress or regression, but only about the endless evolution of history. Within the framework of the concept of cyclic development, Vico seeks to prove that history does not have any specific goal, except for the goal of preserving the Human Race, does not have a final point, upon reaching which history itself, the very movement of nations, should stop . The cycle of the historical process must, according to Vico, express infinity of human movement.

For all the laws of the movement of nations, Vico still distinguishes a number of regions that are “such forward movement human civilian things have not been done.” Thus, its course of history is not a fatal pattern, but a process determined by specific factors. Entire nations fall from a developed state into a wild one. This happens, according to Vico, when the mind, intoxicated by its achievements, falls into the power of abstractions. The loss of living sources of life and thinking leads to the death of culture, to a new barbarity.

Each era described by Vico is not just a conglomeration of various phenomena that coexist, but are in no way connected with each other, but it is a kind of unity, all the components of which are permeated with one fundamental principle and express one main value. Values ​​are changing and, accordingly, a new era is coming to replace it. The discovery of such an internal interconnection and interdependence of the components of each era was sometimes credited to subsequent culturologists (most often Spengler), meanwhile, in the history of European culturological thought, the founder of this approach is Vico.

In the Viconian "new science" a special place is given to the theory of language, since it is in language that the unity of mankind is captured. According to Vico, language is the receptacle of the universal, the repository of the unconscious and the unformulated. The first language was gesture, then hieroglyphs and ideograms. Following them, the language of songs arose, which later developed into recitative and prose language. The song, he believed, having a certain composition, rhythm and rhyme, being an expression of the expressive state of a person, best characterizes the poetic spirit of the era. Along with song, poetry is also a form of prelogical and alogical knowledge. Myths are in perfect harmony with poetry, which truthfully and accurately tell about the mores of distant times. Thus, Vico noted the diversity of cultural forms of comprehension of the world, without giving priority, as happened later, to verbal language.

Studying the legacy of Vico, one can draw a number of parallels to the teachings of subsequent thinkers - Herder, Montesquieu, Hegel, Marx, Dilthey, Nietzsche, Spengler, Simmel, Heidegger and others. It is hardly possible to establish the influence of his ideas, but the closeness is obvious.

A wide range of issues raised in Vico's writings gives reason to credit him with laying the foundations of comparative cultural anthropology, philosophy of history, comparative historical linguistics, aesthetics, hermeneutics, sociology, jurisprudence, and finally, consider him the founder of cultural studies.

Vico's concept of cyclical development was creatively assimilated by two of our compatriots, having had a considerable influence on their own views. We are referring to the outstanding historian, who worked at Moscow University for over 34 years as a Privatdozent, and then as a professor in the Department of World History R.Yu. Vipper (1859-1954) and the leading sociologist P.A. Sorokin (1889-1968), who created the theory of socio-cultural dynamics, which clearly shows the influence of the ideas of the Neapolitan thinker. He himself writes about this in the Preface of his fundamental work Social and Cultural Dynamics, where the name of Vico is mentioned among the many great social thinkers whose example the author followed.

Deny Availability common unified progress of human society.

Consider the development of society as existence independent local civilizations (cultures) replacing each other throughout the history of human existence, and unrelated directly among themselves.

  1. The theory of "historical circulation"

Work "Foundations of a new science of the general nature of nations" (1725)

    God sets human society in motion. Then it already develops due to its internal natural causes.

    Each people (nation), like a person, goes through 3 epochs (stages) in its development: divine, heroic and human (respectively, childhood, youth, maturity).

    Change of eras - through social upheavals (social revolution).

    The cycle of development ends with a general crisis and the collapse of this society.

    The state arose to curb the interests of various classes.

positive ideas Vico's theories:

  • - the idea of ​​having historical progress in society;
  • - singled out the patterns of historical development.

Vico's ideas in many ways anticipated the later ideas of Herder and Hegel and other philosophers.

  1. Theory of cultural-historical types:

the book "Russia and Europe" (M.: Book, 1991)

United there is no world civilization. There is only individual, local civilizations (the so-called cultural and historical types). They include, as a rule, peoples close by blood.

Each of the civilizations (types) is fundamentally different from the other, thanks to 4th fundamentals(criteria):

  • - religious;
  • - cultural (art, morality, science);
  • - political;
  • - socio-economic.

The core of each cultural-historical type is the so-called. "historical nations"(having their own national idea and task). They are adjacent peoples-losers. They serve as ethnographic material for historical nations (they are absorbed by it, assimilated).

For example: For Russia - Karelians, Mordovians, Cheremis.

Anecdote: Russian and Mordvin (water and vodka).

Allocated in the history of 10 types:

European, Roman, Greek, Egyptian, Chinese, Babylonian, Indian, Iranian, Hebrew, Romano-Germanic. Slavic type- special (because it has the most basics, more than 4).

There are also peoples - "scourges of the human race"- Contribute to the destruction of decrepit civilizations.

  1. The theory of dying cultures:

Ostwald Spengler(1880-1936) German philosopher and historian

The work “Sunset of Europe” 1918-1922

denied the existence of unilinear progressive progress, unified human culture. Simultaneously exists set of equivalent according to the level of maturity of crops.

Features each culture:

  • - form
  • - ideas
  • - passions
  • - life
  • - way to perceive things
  • - death.

Highlighted in the history of mankind 8 main cultures: Egyptian, Babylonian, Indian, Chinese, Maya, Greco-prime, Byzantine-Arab, Western European. He spoke about the emergence of Russian-Siberian culture.

Stages of cultural development:

childhood, youth, maturity, fading.

Approximate with fate of existence culture: 1000 years.

Then the dying cultures are replaced opposite them in terms of quality civilizations(!): transition from creativity to routine life and stagnation. Civilization is the so-called. “mass society”, bourgeois-petty-bourgeois values, fear, loss of intellect, decline in spirituality.

In Europe, civilization appeared in the 19th century (“The Decline of Europe”).

The new historical consciousness that finally triumphed in the XDC century owes much to the Italian philosopher of history Giambattista Vico (1668–1744). His main work, The Foundations of a New Science of the General Nature of Nations (Principi di scienza nuova, 1725), is difficult to understand and little known during his lifetime. However, the main idea of ​​this work is simple. According to Vico, we can only have clear and reliable knowledge about what we ourselves have created [In a sense, Vico's basic idea was already formulated by Hobbes. (See his Six Lessons to the Professors of the Mathematics. T. Hobbs. English Works. Ed. By W. Molesworth. Vol. 7. - P. 183 ff). “Some of the arts are demonstrable, others are not. Proofs are those where the construction of their object is in the power of the creator, who, in proving, does nothing more than deduce consequences from his own actions. The reason for this is that the science of any subject is derived from the prediction of its causes, generation and construction. Therefore, the evidence is there where the causes are known, and not where they are sought. Therefore, geometry is demonstrative, since the lines and figures about which we reason are drawn and described by ourselves. Jurisprudence (civil philosophy) is also evidence-based, since we ourselves create the state (the commonwealth). But since natural bodies are known to us not as our constructions, but by their consequences, there are not proofs here of what the causes we are looking for are, but of what they can be. Hobbes does not connect the consequences of this principle with historical science. With natural scientists in mind, Kant also writes that “reason sees only what it creates according to its own plan” (I. Kant. Critique of pure reason. Preface to the second edition. Translation by NLossky. Checked and edited by Ts. Arzakanyan and M. Itkin . - M., 1994. - S. 14). For the first time only in Herder (Johann Gottfried von Herder, 1744-1803), Droysen (Johann Gustav Droysen, 1808-1884) and Dilthey (Wilhelm Dilthey, 1833-1911) we find a systematization of the history and sciences of the spirit, which corresponds to Vico's attempt to create new humanitarian sciences.].

Vico had in mind, first of all, society and history, as well as all the institutions and laws (ordinances) that constitute society. man made differs sharply from what God created, that is, from nature. Since nature was created not by people, but by God, only God is able to fully and completely understand it. We can describe natural processes and figure out how physical phenomena in experimental situations, but we will never get the knowledge of why nature behaves the way it does and not otherwise. People can cognize nature only "from the outside", from the "position of the observer". We will never understand nature "from within" as God does. For us, only those things that we understand “from the inside” are completely understandable and intelligible, provided that their creator is a person [See. Giambattista Vico. Foundations of a new science of the general nature of nations. Translation by A. Huber. - M.-K., 1994.]. Thus, for Vico, the distinction between what is created by man and what is given by nature has important epistemological implications.

Vico's basic idea has several implications. First, the Foundations of a New Science make adjustments to Cartesianism. Descartes argued that human studies cannot give us reliable knowledge. Keeping in mind research public life Rome, Descartes ironically asked if we could ever know Furthermore What did Cicero's maid know? Vico, as we see, is of the opposite opinion. We can have reliable knowledge only in the sciences, the objects of study of which are in a certain sense created by man. This applies to arithmetic, geometry (in which we "create" definitions, axioms and rules of inference) and history. In natural science we will never reach a similar degree of reliability.

Secondly, Vico foresaw the current debate in the philosophy of science over the relationship between the humanities and natural sciences. The difference between them, says Vico, is connected not only with their methods, but also with their inherent types of relations between the subject of knowledge and the object of knowledge. For Vico, society, culture and history are products of the human spirit [This thesis by Vico is central to Dilthey's interpretation of philosophy humanities. See W. Dilthey. Der Aufbau der geschichtlichen Welt in den Geisteswissenschaften. - Frankfurt am Main, 1970. - S.180.]. So, in the "new science" the researcher tries to understand society and culture as an expression of human intentions, desires and motives. In the humanities we are not dealing with the Cartesian distinction between subject and object. In them, the object of knowledge itself is the subject (people and the society they created). In the humanities, the researcher, in a certain sense, personally "participates" in the life and work of other people. On the contrary, in relation to nature, he is always in the position of an “observer”. This circumstance determines the difference between the methods of the humanities and the natural sciences.

“But in this thick darkness of the night, covering the first, most remote Antiquity from us, there appears an eternal, unsetting light, the light of that Truth that cannot be subjected to any doubt whatsoever, namely, that the first World of Citizenship was undoubtedly made by people . Therefore the appropriate Reasons can be found (as they must be found) in the modifications of our own human mind. Anyone who thinks about it must be surprised how all Philosophers quite seriously tried to study the Science of the World of Nature, which was made by God and which therefore He alone can know, and neglected to think about the World of Nations, i.e. about the World of Citizenship, which was made by people, and the Science about which can therefore be accessible to people” [p.108].

Vico's epistemological reflections also touch on one of the fundamental questions of the humanities: how modern man can understand what has been created by previous historical epochs and other cultures? Vico believes that when historians and philosophers speak about the past, they reveal a lack of historical consciousness. They attribute to past times the understanding they themselves possess. But human mental and intellectual views change from epoch to epoch. Knowledge formulated and used in one historical time is difficult to express and use in another historical time. An example of an anachronism, Vico emphasizes, is the assumption that the natural law of the 18th century existed on early history humanity. The exponents of the concept of natural law (Hobbes, Grotius, etc.) forget that it took two thousand years before philosophers developed modern theory natural law [See. Vico. Foundations. - S. 104, 107.]. Moreover, we must warn against believing that the people of the past had a language, the art of poetry, and a rational mind that correspond to what we find in our time.

If we want to understand the people of the past, we must study their language (Viko also calls the "new science" philology). We must immerse ourselves in their life situations and see things from their point of view. Such an approach is obvious now, in the 20th century, but it was not so in Vico's time. We have at our disposal the "historical consciousness" for which Vico fought in early XVIII V.

However, how can one “immerse” oneself in other cultures and eras? Vico is critical of the radical Enlightenment view that the Bible is made up of myths and legends, i.e. church-supported "superstitions" and "fictions". For Vico, myths are evidence that earlier epochs organized their experience in different conceptual schemes than later epochs. Early eras looked at the world through mythological glasses. This world can only be reconstructed with the help of "fantasy" (or, as Herder would put it fifty years later, the immersion of Einfuhlung). With the help of fantasy, we can, so to speak, feel the life situations of other people, participate in their lives and understand their world “from the inside”. Fantasy is the ability to imagine other ways of categorizing the world. Treating myths as "superstitions", we lose the opportunity to understand how people of past eras thought, how they, based on a mythological understanding of reality, acted and thereby changed themselves and their world. Viko says that we can learn how to use our imagination methodically if we remember what it is like to be a child. We are often surprised by the strange combinations of words and associations in children, their "poetry", "irrationalism", inability to draw logical conclusions. This is exactly what the primitive and prelogical mentality of the first people should have been [In its modern form, this thesis was developed by the French sociologist Lucien Levy-Bruhl (1857–1939) (see La mentality primitive. Paris, 1922).]. Similar to the process of the transformation of a child into an adult, rational and moral individual, we must imagine the gradual development of different peoples capacity for rational thinking. For Vico, there is an analogy between the development of the people and the development of the individual. Phylogeny (the development of a species) resembles ontogeny (the development of an individual), the microcosm reflects the macrocosm. All peoples experience childhood, youth, maturity, old age, decline and death. This cycle repeats indefinitely.

For Vico, the understanding that is acquired through our imagination is not knowledge based on ordinary facts, nor is it knowledge based on relations between concepts. It is more like the "intuition" we think we have about the character and behavior of our intimate friend. Vico argues that, due to our common human nature, we can understand other people as if from within. In other words, we can interpret their actions as an expression of intentions, desires and reasons. We approach such insight when we try to understand what it meant to be human in Plato's Athens or Cicero's Rome. We can acquire such comprehension, according to Vico, only with the help of empathy or fantasy (cf. how, depending on the position of "participant" or "observer", the conflict between "inside" and "outside" is understood differently). With this, Vico seeks to characterize cognition, or cognition, which is neither deductive, nor inductive, nor hypothetical-deductive. He seeks thereby to offer humanitarian research a new research program and new methodological principles.

At the same time, Vico's Foundations of New Science is a synthesis of philology, sociology and historiography. The new science describes three main historical epochs: 1) the time of the gods; 2) the time of heroes; and 3) the time of humanity. For Viko, this is “ideal eternal history through which all nations pass. Of course, he does not believe that all nations develop in the same way. They approach more or less this "model" of "ideal eternal history" or, to use Weber's terminology, the ideal type of historical movement. A nation arises, matures and dies. New nations repeat the same cycle. Vico is aware that the "perfect eternal story" cannot be fully explained on the basis of the intentions of individual individuals. He draws attention to the fact that human actions often have unpredictable consequences. In this connection, Vico speaks of the incomprehensible ways of Divine Providence in history. His position differs both from the Stoicist understanding of fate and from Spinoza's view of necessity. God, or Divine Providence, does not directly intervene in history, but through human actions realizes what no one could even think of [To the extent that human creatures are created by God, they will never be able to fully understand their role in divine plans , that is, how Divine providence uses human nature to realize His purpose in relation to people. From a slightly different point of view, it can be said that the sciences of people as "natural" and as "spiritual" creatures are radically different from each other (cf. Vico's division of natural and human sciences).].

In the light of this "ideal-type" model, we can approach the content of the picture of history developed by Vico. Faced with the forces of nature, the first people experienced fear and horror. Intentions and purposes were attributed to nature. In a certain sense, everything that exists seemed sacred. These people did not have the universal concepts and developed language that arose at a later time. Their picture of the world was based on analogies and associative thinking [According to Vico, we can find traces of this picture of the world in our language. We no longer believe that the river has a "mouth", but we continue to speak of the "mouth" of the river. For us, the tornado has no "eye", but we continue to talk about the "eye of the tornado".]. They imagined that traditions, habits, and social institutions were established by the gods. What is right and just, they were informed by the oracle. The first "natural law" was understood as "God-given". The form of government was literally theocratic words. As we can see, it was a way of life in which everything was interconnected and dependent on the primitive "nature" or mentality of man. According to Vico, this was "the time of the gods". During this period, people created religion, art, and poetry that suited their way of life and emotional outlook.

In the next stage, during the "age of heroes", powerful patriarchs (patres) became the leaders of families and tribes. The weak sought protection and became plebeians. This era is described in Homer's Iliad [Vico emphasizes that the Iliad and the Odyssey were created by different authors. He believes that these poems are separated by 600 years. The Iliad is also not the work of one person, but the result of folk art(folk poetry). Thus, Vico begins the discussion of the so-called "Homeric question".]. At this phase of history, there is also an internal relationship between the picture of the world, poetry and lifestyle. The heroic consciousness is "poetic", not discursive. Metaphors prevail over concepts. The wisdom of the era is "poetic" and not philosophical. Homeric heroes sing, they don't speak prose.

Social differentiation gives rise to the internal dynamics of the "heroic society". The life of the plebeians and what they produce are in the hands of the masters [Vico. Foundations. - S. 250.]. Gradually, the plebeians (famuli) begin to realize their strength and, accordingly, need less protection. They "humanize", learn to argue and demand their rights. Demands from the slaves lead to the unification of the forces of the masters in order to suppress the resistance of the oppressed. This conflict is the source of the emergence of aristocracy and monarchy. According to Vico, Solon (630-560 BC) was the first spokesman for the new egalitarian mentality.

Solon prompted the oppressed to reflect and recognize that "their human nature is the same with the noble ones: and that, therefore, they must be equated with them in civil law(civil diritto)" [Viko. Foundations. - P. 151 Thus, Vico, as it were, foresaw the Hegelian dialectic of master and slave. When those who are ruled are understood as equals with those who rule, then, according to Vico, a change in the form of government becomes inevitable. As a result, the form of government from aristocratic becomes democratic. During this transition, the language also changes its character. We find ourselves in a "prosaic" era. People learn to use abstractions and general concepts. Philosophical wisdom replaces poetic wisdom. We come to the "modernist" distinction between the sacred and the profane, between the temple and the tavern.

In this third historical epoch, called by Vico "the time of man", the individual appears for the first time, and with it individualism. Individualism and selfishness breed disunity and a tendency to disintegrate. In Antiquity, the last "modernists" were the Cynics, the Epicureans, and the Stoics. The decline ended in barbarism, and the Middle Ages began a new cycle [Vico's analysis of the decline of the Roman Empire has much in common with the analysis of E. Gibbon (Edward Gibbon, 1737–1794), conducted in The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. T. 1–6. Translation by V. Nevedomskaya. M., 1883-1886.]. According to Vico, all peoples go through a similar cycle (corsi e ricorsi). However, it is not clear whether he interprets this historical process as "the eternal repetition of the same thing" (Nietzsche) or as a more dialectical, spiraling development (Hegel and Marx). The driving force behind this process is the people themselves. In battles and conflicts, they create new forms of life and institutions that again express their vision of the existing. Here Vico again proves to be the forerunner of the Hegelian and Marxian dialectical understanding of history. Therefore, the characterization of Vico as "an imaginative historical materialist" (Isaiah Berlin, 1909-1997) is not far from the truth.

In a certain sense, we can also say that Vico introduced the so-called historicist principle of individuality, which states that each culture and era is unique and unrepeatable. The new forms of life are no worse and no better than the old ones, they only differ from each other. In line with this principle of individuality, Vico denies the existence of absolute aesthetic standards. Each era has its own form of expression. The Homeric epic is an expression of the way of life of the cruel ruling class. Only the right conditions could give rise to the way of life and the people we find in the Iliad and the Odyssey. Subsequent eras, Vico emphasizes, would not have been able to create such an epic, since in the time of Homer people literally saw things in a way that we no longer see. Likewise, heroic and democratic characters (for example, Moses and Socrates) must be seen as specific and characteristic expressions of two different eras human mentality and way of thinking. The refined debauchery of Nero (AD 37-68) is also the expression of an age of decline and decay.

Based on the principle of individuality, Vico argues that the form of government inherent in the era is due to the nature of the natural law of this period of time. In turn, the content of natural law is rooted in morality and custom, which ultimately express the understanding of the way of life and reality inherent in the era. Consequently, we can detect a certain unity of the various institutions of a given society. This unity is the expression of man's abilities and his ways of thinking. So, Vico develops the historicist principle of individuality, which we will meet later when considering the ideas of Herder, Hegel and the German science of the spirit (Geisteswissenschaft).

Giambattista Vico, with his work “The Foundations of a New Science of the General Nature of Nations”, according to N. S. Mudragey, was the founder of the very philosophy of history. The concept of the three-stage cycle of development of human society is his hallmark, but under it the Italian thinker also developed a solid theoretical base of an epistemological nature. Vico's ideas were not understood in his contemporary era, because at that time philosophers were more interested in the problems of the laws of nature and the limits of the human mind, and social patterns have not yet attracted due interest. Vico's ideas were rediscovered in the 19th century, in the era of postclassical philosophy and the formation of a civilizational approach in its modern form.

Vico drew attention to the fact that, studying the external world of nature, scientists leave aside their own world, the world of people, to which he gave the name "World of Citizenship". Based on the point of view that only the creator can fully know what he created, and the natural world was created by God, he concluded that a person should focus on knowing what he created, the social sphere, social relations and their possible patterns.

In his "New Science", by which the author understood "a new critical art - to find the truth about the founders of nations in the depths of folk traditions", Vico set the goal of understanding the course of human history, the meaning of human existence on earth. Knowing the past, identifying its patterns, the philosopher believed, we can understand what awaits us in the future. Attracting for analysis, first of all, the history of Europe in the period of antiquity and the Middle Ages, Vico concluded that every human society goes through three stages in its development - the Age of the Gods, the Age of Heroes and the Age of People. Finishing its cycle, society moves to a new round of the spiral. Ultimately, there is no final frontier. Mankind lives and develops only to maintain its existence.

Moving to a new stage, the nation makes a qualitative leap, changing in culture, behavior stereotypes, etc. For example, in the Age of the Gods, morals are pious, religion comes first, in the Age of Heroes, people are ardent, warlike, passionate. The Age of People awakens rational feelings, civic duty. The driving force of such a process is the natural spiritual and physical development person. However, the laws of social life are not, like itself, a product of human creativity, but are established by Providence.

Vico builds his research on the analysis of human thoughts, ideas, expressed in languages, legends, myths and reflecting human affairs. His "new science" was to become the history of human ideas. However, ideas for him are not the subject of research. The study of ideas is a way of knowing the World of Citizenship.

The history of mankind must be comprehended by two sciences, called by Vico philosophy and philology. “Philosophy considers Reason, from which the Knowledge of Truth flows; Philology observes the Independence of the Human Will, from which comes the Consciousness of the Certain. Such a division is based on two forms of knowledge identified by Vico: knowledge given by the intellect, and consciousness generated by a person's volitional effort. In the broadest philosophical sense, this touches upon the question of the relationship between the general and the whole, which constantly pops up in Vico's reasoning. Knowledge and philosophy using this method study the general, consciousness and philology study the particular. Vico does not give preference to any of the forms of knowledge, since this would lead to an extreme that does not exist in historical reality. The history of mankind is a diverse manifestation of human activity and at the same time reflects general order established by Providence.

Accordingly, history and man are also inseparable for Vico. In this sense, believing that without history there is no man and there is no history without man, Vico anticipates modern views on the problem of space and matter, according to which the existence of objects and the space containing them are interdependent. In this case, we are talking about social space. Trying to reflect history in its entirety and the interdependence of its elements, Vico denies external goals, the instrument for achieving which could be human deeds.

The natural development of man, recognized by the philosopher as the driving force of the historical process, makes it possible to get away from a one-sided definition of human society, when only one side of it is emphasized and a holistic view is lost. For Vico, history should not be a consideration of man and society only from the economic, political, religious or any other side, all forms of human activity should be studied.

The question of the relationship between the general and the particular also emerges in the question of the mechanisms for the development of society. While asserting the principle of free will in the activities of people, the philosopher, nevertheless, calls Providence the founder of the order of this development. This again reflects the problem of the correlation of individuality, the specific actions of individuals guided by their own goals and objectives, and general course history, in which patterns are undoubtedly visible.

Vico introduces the concept of Providence, guiding and guiding people in their affairs, to explain the common features that are manifested in the development of various peoples, the general result created by completely different people whose activities never lead history to chaos, which was subsequently, in principle, repeated and Toynbee in explaining the most general and fundamental foundations of our world, which cannot be fully known by a person living in this order, and therefore attributed to divine power.

In Vico, however, the “divine” problem is solved quite “humanely”: Providence controls people, using the common sense of nations for this. In modern language, Vico addresses the issue of collective consciousness, group identity and imaginary communities, which is very actively discussed in today's science. The identification of the general, group, social in the individual consciousness of a person is precisely one of the main tasks of the modern humanities. In addition, Vico says, Providence uses divine and human authority when people do things without realizing, but believing in the word, and the secret wisdom of philosophers who reveal to ordinary members of society the hidden truth, the laws of history. Thus, the mechanisms of action of Providence, a supernatural force, are not themselves supernatural.

Recognizing the external source of the course of history, Vico thereby justifies the existing reality. In any case, it should be the natural result of development, since it is not blind chance or blind fate that establishes its order, but conscious force. Accordingly, having comprehended the result of its activity in the past, mankind is able to see its future: “... it was there that it should have been before, that is how it should and now and will continue to flow the history of nations, as it is considered by real Science, since given order was established by Divine Providence…” [Cit. according to: 8. S. 107]. On the basis of this statement, Vico can be safely ranked among the objective idealists, who later became the majority of "civilizationists".

Considering in more detail the concept of Vico's eternal ideal history, it should be noted that it compares favorably with the speculative constructions of classical philosophy in that the author tried to build it according to the principle scientific work(although philosophy stands apart in a number of forms of cognition of reality). In epistemology, Vico relied on the mathematical ideal of knowledge, extolling geometry above all else as a science that actually studies what it creates, i.e. arbitrarily chosen points, lines, planes. The philosopher makes excessively high demands on the concept of truth, considering its task to be the knowledge of the “eternal and unchanging order of things”, in social terms - the so-called. "ideal history", which leads him to create an objectivist model of social development.

The combination of theoretical thinking and empiricism, the need to study the relationship between general laws and many specific facts of history is constantly emphasized by Vico: “... both philosophers who did not support their considerations with the authority of philologists and philologists who did not try to justify their authority with the mind of philosophers stopped halfway: if If they had done this, they would have been more useful to the State and would have warned us about the discovery of our Science” [Cit. according to: 6. S. 56].

In this statement, the realm of the certain correlates with human activity. Reliable knowledge, on the criteria of which Vico thought a lot, laying the foundations of his work, is directed by a goal and is guided by a certain way of action. As a result, the data of “philology” (i.e., narrative historical science and source studies) move to the level of truth, get the opportunity to be theoretically analyzed and generalized, and philosophical truths acquire practical confirmation. In the unity of philology and philosophy, a “new science” is born, with which Vico “explains the Eternal Ideal History, flowing in accordance with the Idea of ​​Providence; and in the whole work it is proved that by this Providence the Natural Law of Nations was established; according to such an Eternal History, all the separate Histories of Nations flow in time in their origin, progress, state, decline and end” [Cit. according to: 6. S. 188].

The "new science" is built on the model of geometry, however, according to Vico, it far surpasses its model in reliability: "... in our constructions there is so much more reality, as far as the laws of human activity are more real than points, lines, surfaces and figures" [Cit. . according to: 6. C. 58]. It is clear that in modern social science, which is strongly influenced by postmodernism, such confidence in the realism of the laws of human existence and the possibility of their comprehension will cause skepticism, however, remembering the principles of historicism, the founder of which was Vico himself, it should be understood that in the 18th century. such views were certainly ahead of their time. In any case, without assuming the discovery of any real facts of individual and social life, the process of cognition is unlikely to be fruitful.

Although Vico is an adherent of the rationalistic criterion of truth, opposing it to external feelings, this does not prevent him from defending the possibility of historical knowledge, denied by the rationalists. Moreover, Vico in a sense rehabilitates mythological thinking, pointing out that it reflects the real situation in one way or another, and therefore myths can be a source of our knowledge about the past. In this combination of rationalism and intuition, laying the foundations for future historicism, Vico's creative individuality is manifested. It is impossible to discard folk traditions, since they are true in essence, but inadequate in form. Ancient people felt the truth, although they could not formulate it in the appropriate language. Having clearly imagined the nature of primitive consciousness, one can obtain adequate knowledge of the pre-literate past. In addition, Vico realized that even distorted information captured in myths is part of the life of the people of the era being studied, from which, in principle, one can pave the way to the theory of discourse developed in modern science: "We must ... adhere to a path completely opposite to that followed by priests and philosophers ... and instead of mystical meanings, restore in Myths their innate historical meanings" [Cit. according to: 6. S. 86].

Myths, according to Vico, give us grounds for the periodization of human history. Every society goes through the Age of the Gods and the Age of the Heroes, according to what the myths it creates mainly tell about. The very creation of myths is already an indicator of a certain development of society, the transition of a person from an animal state to a certain civilization, mental activity, self-control, carried out on the basis of the norms of behavior recorded in myths.

In the first two epochs, man is not yet independent in the full sense; public consciousness, occupy the gods and their heirs heroes. Man is present in fantastic stories invisibly, anonymously. The human ideas of that time were created in accordance with the intellectual possibilities that existed then and the specific way of understanding reality, which Vico talks about a lot, calling it "poetic". A person cannot yet realize himself and therefore projects his own social being onto the “divine” sphere. Hence the philosopher faces the task of grasping the human in the superhuman.

Despite Vico's outward Catholic orthodoxy, his view of religion is rather pragmatic. Religion, he believes, arises in the era of the Gods as a necessary condition for social life. People come up with various names for the heavenly forces, although we are talking about one and the same thing - about a means of curbing the initial animal aggressiveness. Without doubting the existence of Divine power, Vico gives a very mundane, from the point of view of classical Christianity, interpretation for its manifestations in everyday life. He connects the worship of a deity not with the development of higher human spiritual forces, but with the power of feelings and imagination over the intellect, in many respects equating his own faith with other religious cults.

Without bothering with careful calculations and based on the data of only one society, Vico determines the length of the Age of the Gods at nine hundred years, and the Age of Heroes at two hundred. The end of the "heroic" era is marked by the end of the ancient aristocracies and the transition to "people's freedom", the republic. The evolution of the political system, as well as the very life of society, ends with the monarchy, the most perfect form, after the decline of which social life is destroyed, and wild customs reign again, in order to go through the eternal cycle of history once again on a new turn.

The general philosophical postulate of the unity of world history becomes for Vico the principle of historical research, giving it rigor, orderliness and purposefulness. Vico consistently adheres to the principle of the integrity of the methodology. Of course, in the current conditions of the development of scientific thought and the state of the source base, this inevitably leads to exaggerations and assumptions, but it should be remembered that the main thing for the philosopher was still not the reconstruction of the historical picture, but the discovery of the regular repetition of the historical process.