Vico's uncanny humanism : reading the New science between modern and postmodern / Sandra Rudnick Luft.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Luft, Sandra Rudnick, 1934-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Vico, Giambattista, 1668-1744. Principi di una scienza nuova.

Vico, Giambattista.

Humanism.

Hermeneutics.

Poetry.

Physical Description:

xviii, 213 pages ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

Ithaca : Cornell University Press, 2003.

Summary:

Sandra Luft, in her ambitious postmodernist reading of Vico's profoundly influential the New Science, asserts the "strangeness" of texts that struggle to understand human existence outside the assumptions of traditional humanism. One of her central arguments is that Vico as a thinker moved toward such an alien understanding. Despite his warning against the tyranny of "familiar conceits," his work is commonly read within the traditional philosophic assumptions of the West -- assumptions that she shows cannot contain not explain the work's novelty. The book includes extensive comparisons of Vico with Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Derrida. Luft does not regard Vico as a precursor of the postmodern, which she sees as a recurring perspective in the West, one critical of the assumptions underlying traditional humanist conceptions of human nature and knowledge. She finds anachronistic not the question of Vico's affinity to postmodern ideas, but rather his identification with traditional humanism and modernism by modern scholars. Luft's reading brings to the fore radical existential issues in The New Science its concern with origins, with the power of language and social practices, and with its critique of human subjectivity. That perspective makes Vico interesting and important for a wide circle of contemporary readers.

Contents:

The Cartesian Vico 4

Theological Models of Human Creativity 8

1. The Familiar: Verum-Factum as an Epistemological Principle 16

Verum-Factum and the Emergence of Homo Faber in the Modern Age 16

Epistemological Interpretations of Vico's Verum-Factum 24

Verum-Factum as the Secularization of a Divine Predicate 26

Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Humanist Interpretations of Verum-Factum 37

Modernist Interpretations of Vico and the Rhetorical Tradition 49

2. Verum-Factum and the Poetic Ontology of the Hebrews 62

Hans Blumenberg and Verum-Factum as Principle of the Originary 62

Descartes and the Legitimation of Constructed Knowledge 65

The Limits of Constructed Knowledge 70

Cusa and the Closed Circle of Self-Knowledge 70

Nietzsche and the Absoluteness of Art 73

The Originary as Language 76

Scripture and Its Precursors: The Onto-theological Reading of Genesis 76

Scripture and Its Precursors: The Postmodern Reading of the Hebraic Originary 88

Reb Derissa and the Originary Language of Exile 97

The Secularization of the Language of Exile 103

Verum-Factum as the Principle of Poetic Ontology 107

3. The Strange: Verum-Factum and the Secularization of Poetic Ontology 111

On the Most Ancient Wisdom of the Italians and the God of Neoplatonism 118

The New Science as Divine Poiesis 135

The Grossi Bestioni 135

The Divine Originary Power of Human Language 148

Heidegger, Grassi, and the Poetic Understanding of Logos, Davar, Gathering 167

The "Settling" and "Enduring" of Poetic Things 175

The Uncanny Poetic Humanism of the New Science 196.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0801441080

OCLC:

51755711