Giambattista Vico and Event Hermeneutics

Abstract

This article sheds light on the problem of interpretation and its relationship to the event according to the Italian philosopher Giambattista Vico. It explores how a hermeneutic seed forms a constant starting point for the cognitive framework of humanistic philosophy. Vico elucidates how the "new science" in which "philology" and "philosophy" collaborate is the objective level in which the structure and movement of spontaneous human events are reflected. This in itself constitutes an interpretive event. Vico's work focuses on providing an interpretive discussion of truth concerning the "actual reality" by recognizing the nature of interpretation as a potentially poetic construction, as a playful possibility of insight into truth and the logic of its probability. The article seeks to discern the meaning of interpretation and reads Vico's contribution as a pivotal sign of the emergence of a hermeneutic form, resulting in a new form of rationality in understanding human history and thus establishing a hermeneutics of cosmic history.