Vico e Spinoza, moderni eccentrici

As long as we dwell solely on the explicit references to Spinoza in Vico’s works (for example as the ‘fatalist’ who denied divine providence) we can not get beyond direct, and essentially banal, comparisons. Things change considerably, however, when we begin to move beyond these outer layers and seek out Spinozian traits, both in form and substance, in Vico’s ideas. In the vast wealth of criticism on the relationship between these two authors, this essay proposes some specific, in-depth, philosophico-political observations; from the collective and anti-individualistic ‘common nature’ of rights and the ‘imperium’, to the links between theology and politics; from the criticism of the Cartesian metaphysical subject, to the strategic primacy of democracy in modern forms of power.