Philosophy in Italy

Extract

Of late yeaxs Benedetto Croce's interpretation of the philosophy of G. B. Vico has been exposed to continual criticism from Catholic writers anxious to claim for themselves the figure of the great eighteenth-century thinker, wrested from them by Croce for inclusion in a setting of secular and immanentistic philosophy. The Catholic polemic was founded partly on a false supposition: it derived from the idea that Croce meant to deny entirely Vico's Catholicism. Instead, Croce made a distinction between Vico the man and Vico the philosopher. While he recognized that the man cherished Catholic sentiments and beliefs, he denied that the philosopher could reenter the circle of dogmatic and confessional philosophy. To confirm the accuracy of his interpretation, Croce has now republished an interesting monograph by an eighteenth-century Catholic writer, a little later than Vico, G. F. Finetti,1 who subjects the doctrine of Vico to a lively criticism. The motive of this exhumation is plain: “The protest of eighteenth-century Catholic criticism against the doctrines of Vico, or rather, against the doctrines of an author well known to be a blameless observant throughout his life, is of considerable importance because it is the first real acknowledgment of the revolutionary spirit, the anti-Catholic and generally anti-religious spirit, which informed his doctrines.”