Gould on Democracy and the Vernacular in Vico's Plebian Philology @rrgould

Rebecca Gould, University of Birmingham; Harvard University, Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, is publishing Democracy and the Vernacular Imagination in Vico's Plebian Philology in History of Humanities (Forthcoming). Here is the abstract.

This essay examines Giambattista Vico’s philology as a contribution to democratic legitimacy. I outline three steps in Vico’s account of the historical and political development of philological knowledge. First, his merger of philosophy and philology, and the effects of that merge on the relative claims of reason and authority. Second, his use of antiquarian knowledge to supersede historicist accounts of change in time and to position the plebian social class as the true arbiters of language. Third, his understanding of philological knowledge as an instrument of political change, and a foundational element in the establishment of democracy. By treating the philological imagination as a tool for bringing about political change, Vico’s plebian philology is radically democratic, and a crucial instrument in the struggle against the elite, from antiquity to the present.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.