Título: Giambattista Vico
Seção: The rhetoric and humanism of Vico
Background: Giambattista Vico (B. Giovan Battista Vico, 23 June 1668 - 23 January 1744) was an Italian political philosopher and rhetorician, historian and jurist, of the Age of Enlightenment. He criticized the expansion and development of modern rationalism, was an apologist for Classical Antiquity, a precursor of systematic and complex thought, in opposition to Cartesian analysis and other types of reductionism, and was the first expositor of the fundamentals of social science and of semiotics. The Latin aphorism Verum esse ipsum factum ("What is true is precisely what is made") coined by Vico is an early instance of constructivist epistemology. He inaugurated the modern field of the philosophy of history, and, although the term philosophy of history is not in his writings, Vico spoke of a "history of philosophy narrated philosophically."

Conteúdo: Vico's version of rhetoric is product of his humanistic and pedagogic concerns. In the 1708 commencement speech De Nostri Temporis Studiorum Ratione (On the Order of the Scholarly Disciplines of Our Times), Vico said that whoever "intends a career in public life, whether in the courts, the senate, or the pulpit" should be taught to "master the art of topics and [to] defend both sides of a controversy, be it on Nature, Man, or politics, in a freer and brighter style of expression, so he can learn to draw on those arguments which are most probable and have the greatest degree of verisimilitude"; yet, in Scienza Nuova, Vico denounced defending both sides in controversies as false eloquence.  As Royal Professor of Latin Eloquence, Vico prepared students for higher studies in the fields of Law and of Jurisprudence; thus, his lessons were about the formal aspects of the canon of rhetoric, including the arrangement and the delivery of an argument. Yet, Vico chose to emphasize the Aristotelian connection of rhetoric with logic and dialectic, thereby placing ends (rhetoric) at their center. Vico's objection to modern rhetoric is that it is disconnected from common sense (sensus communis), defined as the "worldly sense" that is common to all men.  In lectures and throughout the body of his work, Vico's rhetoric begins from a central argument (medius terminus), which is to be clarified by following the order of things as they arise in our experience. Probability and circumstance retain 

user: What was unusual about Vico's rhetoric?

assistant: Vico's rhetoric begins from a central argument (medius terminus), which is to be clarified by following the order of things as they arise in our experience.

user: How did that differ from the approach of other rhetoricians?

assistant: He would call for a maieutic (jurisprudential) oratory art against the grain of the modern privilege of the dogmatic form of reason,

user: In what way is Vico's approach less dogmatic?

assistant: Vico's emphases on the importance of civic life and of professional obligations

user: How was his humanism expressed?

assistant: What is essential to the oratorical art (Gr. Retorike, rhetorike) is the orderly link between common sense and an end commensurate with oratory;