Vico made me laugh at first with his ethnocentric insistence that his Italian culture had in fact surpassed the “Ancients” in many ways, most notably in scientific tools and patterns of thinking.  His need to place his culture as superior, however, gave way to his notion that the Ancients were indeed superior in one area, one he laments his culture isn’t focusing on enough:  common sense or eloquence. 

In an interesting juxtaposition of common sense and eloquence, along with the equating of memory and imagination (two pairings that aren’t often seen as so similar in modern times), he argues for eloquence to have its place along with philosophical criticism to avoid “an abnormal growth of abstract intellectualism [which could] render young people unfit for the practice of eloquence” (13).  He argues that the art of invention, which he calls “topics,” has been left by the wayside in favor of philosophical criticism, considered by some to be the more important of the two.  Philosophical criticism has to do with abstract intellectualism and a removed sense of right and wrong.  Vico is fairly even-handed in that he sees both eloquence and philosophical criticism as important, but since one has been neglected, Vico is pleading that we encourage invention, topics, “eloquence,” and the ability to argue on either side of an argument, separate from abstract notions of right or wrong.  In the real world, in a community of people, “common sense,” concrete notions of right or wrong, can change.  Students need the ability to perceive and speak of real life in order to not become “experts in philosophical criticism” who, when confronted with the ambiguity of, say, a real court case, plead “’Give me some time to think it over!’” (15). 

A skilled orator needs to “entice” the soul of each in his audience to “love,” for “once it loves, it is taught to believe; once it believes and loves, the fire of passion must be infused into it so as to break its inertia and force it to will” (38).  The fire of passion won’t be instilled with an abstract argument of right or wrong, but with eloquence. 

He seems to be advocating that students experience and study the real world in all its messy, poetic, emotional glory and only then learn how to maneuver in the ivory tower of academics. 

But heaven forbid if you speak French instead of Italian, for Vico states, “While we Italians praise our orators for fluency, lucidity, and eloquence, the French praise theirs for reasoning truly,” and due to the subtlety of their language (as opposed to the his notion of Italian which “constantly evokes images”) , were able to invent the new philosophical criticism which seems so thoroughly intellectualistic” (40), and obviously lacking.  As he quotes, “’genius is a product of language, not language of genius’” (40).  The French apparently haven’t got a chance, but the Italians do … if they refer back to the Ancients and focus on the right things.