The Barbarism of Reflection
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Description
The concept of “barbarism of reflection” is paradoxical not merely because of Vico's systematic identification (throughout the New Science) of barbarism with pre-reflective, and reflection with post-barbaric, stages of social evolution. More difficult than this superficial paradox is the problem of self-reference. Even though Vico's thinking is reflective (and could only emerge when men in general had become reflective enough to attribute agency to themselves and not merely to the gods), he is so far from being disturbed by any barbaric potential inherent in his own thought as to declare quite boldly that his book will be “useful” for postponing the eventual rebarbarization of the republics. Such is the motivating dilemma behind this brief paper: in what way did Vico consider himself to have successfully turned reflection against reflection, and thus to have postponed (not to say prevented) the otherwise inevitable disintegration and decay of advanced society? I do not, however, plan to solve here the problem of the practical consequences of Vico's unquestionably descriptive science. My goal is the more modest one of trying to set up the conceptual framework within which alternative solutions to this problem must be proposed and judged. To do this I will first of all have to make clear how it was possible for Vico to couple “reflection” both with the process of civilization and with the process of rebarbarization. In order to make my analysis as compact as possible, I want to begin with a distinction between two (in reality interrelated) contexts within which, according to Vico, reflection plays both a civilizing and a decivilizing role. I will first consider Vico's idea of pagan religion, concentrating on the contribution made by theological misinterpretations of natural contingency to the survival of primitive societies. I will then go on to analyze the related function of the mythical idea of “natural superiority” in the legitimation of social hierarchy and chains of command. It seems clear that Vico, first of all, associates “reflection” with a process of refinement and civilization because it re-exposes the contingency of the natural and social worlds (the fact that things do not have to be the way they are) and thereby introduces a novel flexibility and “modal” awareness of other accessible possibilities into society. Originally, of course, these "other possibilities" had been concealed by religious fables. Now, Vico also believes that this new and secular awareness of other possibilities has a self-perpetuating and self-augmenting dynamic of its own, that it inevitably leads to the nihilistic conclusion that, indeed, everything is possible and nothing is inherently “right.” Emblematic of the way a reflective re-exposure of theologically suppressed “other possibilities” can change from a civilizing to a barbarizing act is the “natural” slippage from the flexibility of judicial discretion to the hyper-flexibility of moral relativism or the sophistic willingness to argue either side of a case indifferently.
Source Publication
Vico: Past and Present
Source Editors/Authors
Giorgio Tagliacozzo
Publication Date
1981
Volume Number
II: Comparative Investigations—Human Studies
Recommended Citation
Holmes, Stephen, "The Barbarism of Reflection" (1981). Faculty Chapters. 825.
https://gretchen.law.nyu.edu/fac-chapt/825
