Giambattista Vico's Scienza Nuova and the three stages or distinct phase that every nation, every culture and every civilization has to go through in the course of history is remarkable yet profound. I would have to say that some of the ideas he presented were in a way vague. That's how I see it. Although, we may definitely have varied arguments about his work.
I believe that Vico's arguments were almost quite the same with Eliade's Cyclical theory. The slight difference is that the former was able to note the mechanism that made the transition from these stages and he made sure that he can define what those mechanisms are.
The three stages he mentioned, the age of gods, the age of heroes and the age of man were quite distinct in its pattern in terms of intellect, culture and perhaps their norm and ethics of morality. (Vico, 1937) What strikes me though is the idea that he did not include those nations that were Hebraic for some reason. It could either be out of respect for those descendants of the Hebrew tribe or perhaps he just don't consider those tribes as being a part of history, considering that I believe that this group of people, those before the post diluvium flood of the ancient past to Vico represents the primitive man.
I believe that Vico made a wrong notion saying that in most cultures, each stage is an improvement over the preceding one when every third stage is always followed by a period of decline or decadence. In short, human history, in general does not develop in either linear or cyclical pattern as he might have mentioned it.
I wish to turn to the three stages and how it developed according to Vico. The three stages that he call the "age of gods" and the "age of heroes" results from memory and creative acts of imagination while the "age of men" faculties from reflection.
I disagree with the belief that man of the primordial past are beastly, aggressive, predatory and barely outside of the animal stage. A better description should have been child-like, borders on superstition and fear. Men of the past are not beastly but rather fierce to be able to survive in an also fierce environment of the past.
However, I would have to agree with the notion that people of the past feared unusual events like thunder and lightning and thus the creation of the so-called gods who sent a message of rage and anger to these poor creatures. And that is why we have Zeus, Marduk, Indra, Thor and Dunar - the thunder gods. Their thunderbolt is a message and a command. Perhaps, for this people to be able to know what those messages came the practice of augury or divination.
The second stage being the age of heroes borders on mythology and history. And the idea of the patriarchal heroes is really imaginative. Although, he mentioned Homeric Greece and Pre-Republican Rome (Vico, 1937), it is still quite flabbergasted. The fathers of the heroes are chivalric. The knights and the heroes are quite proud and magnanimous. Thus, we have the Homeric Iliad, the Mahabharata and the Songs of Roland. These are chivalric epics. They are stories of great heroes very much like the heroes of the second stage.
The third stage, I would say is the only rational stage. It is the stage that recognizes human equality and the development of the nations. He even cited several rulers to be able to support his claim. That is where the problem leads us to the so-called decadence. This is the time when there is social unrest. This is when the society disintegrates and goes back to barbarism.
The three stages have dramatic implications. It is to say that we cannot break the pattern or that history tends top disintegrate as we are now living the age of man. I believe that history is linear. If at the moment, we are living at the "space age" and the time when everything can be instituted at a click of a button, we cannot go back to the barbaric stage that Vico is stressing in his theory. There can be social unrest, disorganization or otherwise, but man is learning history.
I would say that every nation develops according to its own pattern. Vico was not able to rule out the possibility of change. He insisted on his theory that everything is cyclical. Every nation develops according to their needs. If it's an improvement over the preceding stage, it is a saga. There is in no way that a period of decadence or a period of decline will follow. Since history is in itself, according to Vico's view is a gradual progress, it should be a better improvement from simpler to more complex forms. With the passage of time, human beings will be able to recognize their full potential and that is from child-like beginnings into human being that is aware of the so-called virtue and law. ____________________________________________________________________
sources:
Staloff, D. (1995). The search for a meaningful past philosophies, theories and interpretations.NY: The Teaching Co.
Vico, G. (1937). Selections from Scienza Nuova. In V.F. Calverton (Ed.), The making of society, an outline of sociology. USA: Random House. (Originally published in 1725)
vico. Retrieved October 15, 2008 from http://www.google.images/vico
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