Vico Contra Descartes

Donald Verene writes that Vico’s opposition to Descartes and Cartesian thought rests on a “different conception of man.” For Vico, humans are “an integrality (not sheer rationality, not mere intellect, but also fantasy, passion, emotion),” and Verene also remarks on Vico’s “insistence on the historical and social dimension” of human existence. The last is Vico’s great contribution, his “vindication of the historical dimension of man.” Verene sums up the difference between Descartes and Vico as the difference between the mathematician and the jurist.