Título: Giambattista Vico
Seção: Response to the Cartesian Method
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: As he relates in his autobiography, Vico returned to Naples from Vatolla to find "the physics of Descartes at the height of its renown among the established men of letters." Developments in both metaphysics and the natural sciences abounded as the result of Cartesianism. Widely disseminated by the Port Royal Logic of Antoine Arnauld and Pierre Nicole, Descartes's method was rooted in verification: the only path to truth, and thus knowledge, was through axioms derived from observation. Descartes's insistence that the "sure and indubitable" (or, "clear and distinct") should form the basis of reasoning had an obvious impact on the prevailing views of logic and discourse. Studies in rhetoric - indeed all studies concerned with civic discourse and the realm of probable truths - met with increasing disdain.  Vico's humanism and professional concerns prompted an obvious response that he would develop throughout the course of his writings: the realms of verifiable truth and human concern share only a slight overlap, yet reasoning is required in equal measure in both spheres. One of the clearest and earliest forms of this argument is available in the De Italorum Sapientia, where Vico argues that  to introduce geometrical method into practical life is "like trying to go mad with the rules of reason," attempting to proceed by a straight line among the tortuosities of life, as though human affairs were not ruled by capriciousness, temerity, opportunity, and chance. Similarly, to arrange 

user: How did he respond to the Cartesian method?

assistant: the realms of verifiable truth and human concern share only a slight overlap, yet reasoning is required in equal measure in both spheres.

user: Did he agree or disagree with De Cartes?

assistant: Vico's position here and in later works is not that the Cartesian method is irrelevant, but that its application cannot be extended to the civic sphere.

user: What did Vico propose in the civic sphere?

assistant: Vico suggests (along with the ancients) that appeals to phronesis (phronesis or practical wisdom) must also be made, and likewise appeals to the various components of persuasion that comprise rhetoric.

user: What else did he think?

assistant: to arrange a political speech according to the precepts of geometrical method is equivalent to stripping it of any acute remarks and to uttering nothing but pedestrian lines of argument.