Between chance and destiny. Vico and the concept of Divine Providence

Abstract

One of the controversial plots of the Vico studies is the interpretation of the concept of divine providence. On the one hand is the temptation to interpret it in its most appropriate context, that of the Christian philosophy of history (of Augustine and Bossuet) and through the supposition of the divine and transcendental governance of temporal and contingent human events. But the recognition of this heredity in no way facilitates; on the contrary, it poses obstacles, since Vico, instead of the theological-political preoccupations of an Augustine or a Bossuet, thinks of providence motivated by the instauration of a ‘new science on the common nature of nations’, which is supposed to be more certain than physics because it is based on the convertibility of verum and factum. How to reconcile Vico's modern scientific proposition, his Scienza nuova, with the conception, article of faith, that history is ruled by Providence? In what way does a conception which projects the transcendental ordering of history and thus a divine determination of human action, with the modern idea that man, in immanence, as the God of his world do, create history? Our purpose in these pages is to expose and discuss the economics of these two seemingly incompatible aspects of the vichian concept of providence.