Vico's Orations on Paideia and Humanitas

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Vico's Orations on Paideia and Humanitas

ABSTRACT: This essay on the themes of paideia and humanitas in Giambatista Vico's inaugural orations is excerpted form a chapter of a larger study on Vico and Plato. I focus on Pico della Mirandola's Oration of the Dignity of Man because it illuminates Vico's humanistic ideals. For Vico, self-knowledge is the axis of the sphere of the liberal arts. Self-knowledge for human beings is twofold. The divinity of the human mind is a central theme in Vico as well as Pico, and human dignity is strongly stated. So one aspect of self-knowledge establishes confidence in human abilities. The other side is the recognition of human ignorance and misery. How does Vico reconcile the divinity of the human mind with the observation that most human beings are fools? The same way Pico does. Humanitas is the goal of paideia, not a given. Education makes us into human beings. We become who we are through the cultivation of virtue. Vico inspires in his students the confidence to undertake the heroic effort to rule their passions and dispel ignorance. This confidence in human potential Vico learned from Renaissance thinkers such as Pico. Vico is most impassioned when he treats educational themes, and his words are inspiring today for students and teachers alike.

As part of Giambattista Vico's duties as a professor of Latin Eloquence at the University of Naples in the 18th century, each year he gave an inaugural oration. (1) His orations were meant to inspire students to become better human beings through education, to rouse in them the courage to pursue difficult studies. Vico confidently tells the young students that they are "born for wisdom" (IO 1.4). The emphasis throughout the inaugural orations is on the free choice to become wise through purifying the mind and spirit, or to be a fool through allowing the passions to rule. Only individuals who can rule themselves first can rule others. Vico's task is to encourage these students by conveying his confidence in their capacity to become wise. In order to persuade them, Vico draws on ideas from a remarkable array of sources from both Latin and Greek traditions. I will be concerned only with the echoes of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola's Oration On the Dignity of Man. (2) Vico learned from Renaissance thinkers such as Pico his confidence in the ability of paideia to create humanitas.

The reader of Vico's first oration is immediately struck by Vico's use of exclamations.

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