Giambattista Vico (1668 - 1744) is the most significant philosopher from Italy. He served as professor of rhetoric at the University of Naples from 1699 until his death. Vico is considered post-renaissance because he published his works in the early 18th century.
The philosophical basis for all his work is his belief that Verbum and factum (created truths) are interchangeable; therefore only we can know for certain the truths about the truths we have created. He argues that the natural sciences can only yield approximate truths (verbum) based on man's attempts to imitate nature through experimentation. Only in the humanities (human sciences) can man find exact knowledge because when we study society, we are studying ourselves and our own creations.
In many ways, Vico merely regurgitates Cicero. He attempted to revive the notion of historical consciousness which holds that identity is gained through a collective memory of past events. Vico argues that historical consciousness will structure the way a group will react to future events. The use of historical consciousness is an important rhetorical skill in that rhetors use events from the past and links them, metaphorically, to current events. This linkage can alter the group identity as well as the groups view of the institutions around it. Through this linkage, history is recast, and the group's view of the future is altered. The rhetor, in many ways, creates a self-fulfilling prophecy by shaping the way the group sees current events and shapes how they will see the future.
Vico's most important idea is his belief in the primacy of language in social life. Vico argues that language shapes the way we think of ourselves. He believed language shapes the way we think ourselves. Vico's believed that systematic approaches designed to create knowledge only provides insight into the individual mind of the person who designed the approach. He believed that language is a social instrument in that it takes the individual minds and allows them to interact in the social domain; thus expanding them.
Vico also addressed argumentation. His primary belief was that ideas compete with one another in this social domain through language. Therefore, Rhetoric was the central logic of social behavior in that it conditions how ideas were shaped, selectively lived or died, and how history is shaped.
Vico's argument is three-fold:
Vico defined validity as "a social construct," arguing that it is a matter of looking at the goals of a society and understanding its language it uses to address its goals. The parts of the language we keep are valid. Vico argues that style is the strength of a language because it copes with the inadequacies of representation. Since words only represent things, we must combine words in creative ways to elicit the unique character of a thing through the metaphoric relationship of language. Style, for Vico, is a way of achieving the exact nuance we are trying to create. Style, then, creates understanding.
Thus, for Vico, language is the fundamental institution of a society which establishes the logic all speakers work with. Thus, institutions are rendered into symbols which then, in turn, build myths about the institutions. This interaction between style and institution gives society its flexibility to preserve its dynamic identity.