Vico's Theory of History and the French Revolutionary TraditionAuthor(s): Patrick H. HuttonReviewed work(s):Source: Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 37, No. 2 (Apr. - Jun., 1976), pp. 241-256Published by: University of Pennsylvania PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2708823 .Accessed: 20/10/2012 05:22

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VICO'S THEORY OF HISTORY AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTIONARY TRADITION

BY PATRICK H. HUTTON

Giambattista Vico is today widely heralded as one of the most original minds of the eighteenth century for his pioneering work in the social history of ideas. Hence it is instructive to examine the ways in which Vico has appealed to those who have theorized about the nature of social change in history. Some historians have portrayed him as a precursor of Marx because of his bold speculations about the advance of civilization through social conflict toward egalitarianism. Yet it is important to remember that Vico has appealed equally to conserva- tives, who have discovered in his writings not a prophecy of progress for the modern age but rather a prediction of decline. The historiography of the French Revolutionary tradition provides a particularly in- teresting field for analyzing this problem. French historians have been inclined to see in their Revolutionary tradition a larger meaning about the course of modern history, and many have valued Vico's vision of history as a frame of reference with which to judge that tradition's nature. The most celebrated of these is Jules Michelet, who toward the middle of the nineteenth century turned to the New Science as a basis for idealizing the significance of the Revolution of 1830. For Michelet, the Revolution signalled man's entry into a new awareness of his ca- pacity to shape his social destiny, a lesson Michelet claimed to have learned from Vico. Yet opponents of the revolutionary movement in France have found in Vico an apologist for traditionalism. In the im- mediate aftermath of the French Revolution, Joseph de Maistre cited Vico's New Science as a warning about the degenerative effects of vio- lent social change.' A century later, Georges Sorel, an iconoclastic critic of the French Revolutionary tradition, invoked Vico's theory of history to predict that modern civilization was on the verge of its demise. Thus each of Vico's admirers has looked to the New Science as an authority with which to corroborate his own sense of history's di- rection. When their varied viewpoints are tallied, however, the direc- tions they suggest trace an arc which continues to run the entire course of Vico's ideal nation-full-circle.

Vico would certainly have approved of the quest of French his- torians to discover in their past the meaning of the "course the nations run." But some scholars have questioned whether Vico would have been comfortable in the role of social prophet for the modern age. His-

Elio Gianturco, Joseph De Maistre and Giambattista Vico (New York, 1937). 241

242 PATRICK H. HUTTON

torians who have studied Vico in the eighteenth-century Neapolitan context, in which he lived and wrote, note his indifference to the major political quarrels of his day.2 His personal sensibilities were con- servative, and his interests as an historian were concentrated exclu- sively upon ancient civilization. Studies of the French Revolutionary tradition have generally favored a linear conception of history, whereas Vico's conception was cyclical. Leaders of French revolutionary move- ments were overwhelmingly committed to the affirmation of autono- mous human goals, but Vico interpreted human ends in terms of a larger Providential design. Some scholars have dismissed Vico's references to Providence as a ruse to satisfy ecclesiastical censors. In fact, he believed that his theory of history would reaffirm the teachings of Catholic orthodoxy. Moreover, Vico's stress upon creative elites is obviously at odds with the recent interest among French historians in the role of anonymous popular movements in shaping the course of the French Revolution. Hence, the presentation of Vico as a philosopher of progress, or references to a parallel between the role of Vico's poet- founders and the Jacobins of the French Revolution, ascribe to him mo- tives which were beyond anything he ever conceived.3

Studies of the historical Vico have greatly increased our under- standing of Vico's preoccupations. But it is the prophetic uses of Vico's thought which account for his acclaim among subsequent generations, most notably our own.4 Vico's New Science has enjoyed lasting appeal as a source of insight for theorists who aspired to new or fuller social conceptions, even if they sometimes modified Vico's theory to serve their own tendentious designs. The fact that theorists of varied back- ground and intent have discovered in Vico the inspiration for their endeavor is itself a testament to the depth of his vision. The enduring value of Vico's New Science is derived not from its completeness as a social history nor from its accuracy as a prediction of history's di- rection, but rather from its scope as a paradigm of man's social nature, a nature which can only be perceived in the process of historical change. To understand Vico today, it is necessary to retrace his ideas as they have been delineated upon the wider map of modern historiography.

2Benedetto Croce, The Philosophy of Giambattista Vico, trans. R. G. Collingwood (New York, 1913), 249-52.

3Arnaldo Momigliano, in his article "Vico's Scienza Nuova: Roman 'Bestioni' and Roman 'Eroi'," History and Theory, 5 (1966), 3-23, explains that Vico's theory of social conflict was not an apology for revolution, but a device designed to preserve the distinction between sacred and profane history. The poet-founders of civilization, the "great beasts" who ruled the first cities through poetic intuition, were presented not as a proof of primitive man's autonomy, but rather of his dependence upon divine Provi- dence for survival. If some historians have seen an analogy between them and the Jacobins of the French Revolution, the Jacobins themselves would hardly have found flattering an image which denied both their autonomy and their rationality.

4George Lichtheim, Europe in the Twentieth Century (New York, 1972), 358-62.

VICO AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 243

For this reason, our search for the true Vico in the historiography of modern France is not unlike Vico's search for the true Homer in the poetry of ancient Greece. Our task in this essay is to explain how the prophetic uses of Vico's theory of history by French scholars, espe- cially by Michelet and Sorel who considered his work most deeply, reflect changing perceptions of the meaning of social revolution in the French experience. Such a study may not enable us to choose between Michelet and Sorel. But it should help us to appreciate more fully the relationship between continuity and change in Vico's vision of human destiny, and the relevance of that vision to the ongoing debate among French historians concerning the character of their Revolutionary heri- tage.

Vico's theory of social history is easily outlined, for it is based upon an archetypal model of the genesis and disintegration of civilization. The model is discovered in the study of social institutions, in whose mythopoetic origins and rational modifications the direction of history is revealed.5 To study social history is to study human intentions as they are manifested in the social world that men have themselves created. Historical change corresponds to men's changing perceptions of their social needs.6 Primitive men enter civil society for the security it offers. The founders of civilization are quite literally the founders of cities, the asylums in which they seek refuge from the barbarous surroundings in which they have lost their way. They are poetic in that they evoke from their own minds the myths with which their followers can grasp in a preconscious way the nature of life in society. They are practical in that their myths prepare the way for the creation of social institutions. In this sense, the creation of civilization is a process of myth-making through which men come to understand their social needs in the imaginative forms which the myths provide, and to define their life

5Vico's social theory is derived principally from his study of the social institutions of Greece and Rome: those of Greece as perceived in the poetry of Homer; those of Rome in the Agrarian Laws. His intent is to prove that the social and juridical institutions of Rome were not modeled upon those of the older Greek civilization, but rather evolved independently. This interpretation becomes the basis of his "natural law of the gentes," in which he concludes that the autonomous yet parallel development of Greek and Roman societies was not the consequence of an historical transmission but of an archetypal social evolution common to all civilizations. The New Science of Giambat- tista Vico, 3rd ed. (1744), trans. and ed. Thomas G. Bergin and Max H. Fisch (Ithaca, 1961), 31-39, 145-76, 245, 311, 349, 393, 915ff., 1096; hereafter NS. (All references to this work are to numbered paragraph rather than to page.) See also Max H. Fisch, "Vico on Roman Law," in Essays in Political Theory Presented to George H. Sabine, ed. Milton R. Konvitz and Arthur E. Murphy (Ithaca, 1948), 62-88.

6For Vico, these intentions are transparent in the poetry of primitive peoples, and in their jurisprudence, which was a "severe kind of poetry," NS, 215-33, 311, 338, 1027- 38. For the role of poetry in Vico's theory of history, see Patrick H. Hutton, "The New Science of Giambattista Vico: Historicism in its Relation to Poetics," Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 30 (1972), 359-67.

244 PATRICK H. HUTTON

activity through the institutions upon which these myths are based. "Wisdom" is practical knowledge of how to live in the city. Wise men memorize the myths and imitate the institutions of the poet-founders, whom they hold in religious awe for their power to create ideal social forms with which to liberate themselves from the chaos of the physical world. The history of the origins of civilization is thus a sacred history, in which primitive man discovers his human nature in the process of his integration into society.7

Civilization develops with the quest of the uncivilized to gain access to the privileged enclaves of the cities. That quest promotes a conflict between the civilized elites, who are dedicated to guarding the territorial boundaries and sacred institutions of the cities, and the barbarous com- moners, who seek the civil rights and through them the security which the cities provide. In the course of the struggle, it is the latter who pre- vail, as ambitious princes find it advantageous to champion their cause. The growth of civilization is thus the product of a struggle to extend the sphere of application of public law. The process is fulfilled in the progression from elitist to democratic societies, culminating in the monarchy, which guarantees to all men equal rights under the law.8

The decline of civilization, however, is a necessary consequence of this very accomplishment. The extension of civil rights proceeds at the expense of the elite's sense of civic duty to act as guardians of the law. As the monarchs assume these functions, the citizenry turns from civil responsibilities to private interests. Under these circumstances, the myths of the elite lose their utilitarian value as creative demonstrations of the wisdom of law. The result is a loss of the sense of the sacred, i.e., of the practical need to defend civic institutions, and of the mimetic need to affirm their value in religious ritual. The decay of civilization is thus a process of demythologizing. In losing the memory of his mytho-

7Vico describes how the Greek and Roman gods personify the various social needs of primitive peoples. Every nation, for example, has a conception of Jove, the god who inspired the founding of civil society. Primitive man believed that Jove ruled by signs. The power of the poet-founders, therefore, was based upon their capacity to divine Jove's meaning. The authority of divination was thus one of lawgiving. The Roman term for law, ius, Vico explains, originally meant Jove, and the oracle was civilization's first juridical institution. NS, 187, 193-264, 361-67, 376-99, 433, 473-82, 489-91, 521, 553-61,925,938, 1038.

8This argument is based upon Vico's interpretation of the Agrarian Laws (the Law of Servius Tullius and the Law of the Twelve Tables) as the essential sources of the social history of Rome during its "heroic" age of class conflict. These laws were de- signed by the patricians to mollify the plebeians by granting them qualified rights of land ownership. In fact, these measures served only to exacerbate the plebeians' de- mand for full civil rights, a demand which the patricians were eventually forced to concede. The tribunes, originally chosen by the plebeians to champion their rights against the patricians, finally took advantage of their crucial role in extending the ap- plication of public law in order to seize power as sovereign monarchs. NS, 104-15, 265- 93,582-86, 597-98,609-11,915-1008.

VICO AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 245

poetic origins, civilized man ceases to understand his human nature. Without challenge in its life of ease, without faith in its historical origins, the city succumbs to moral corruption and its institutions disin- tegrate. The history of the demise of civilization is thus a secular his- tory, in which rational man loses sight of the moral foundations of his community. The cycle of civilization returns to its chaotic origins.9

It was Michelet who was chiefly responsible for introducing Vico's theory of history to the French intellectual community. Yet it is worth noting that Vico's ideas were first popularized in France during the Na- poleonic era by a coterie of Neapolitan intellectuals, exiled from their native city following the fall of the Republic there in 1799.10 These "Jacobins," who had initially favored the spread of the French Revo- lution abroad, had grown disillusioned with its adverse impact upon their own efforts to found a republic. As witnesses to, and in some cases participants in, the abortive Revolution at Naples, they re- pudiated Jacobinism as an abstract ideology unsuited to their social needs, and turned to Vico as a surer guide to the possibilities for enlightened reform which their own historical tradition offered. It was they, ironically, who generated the interest in Vico in France which led Michelet to discover him." In the transmission from the Italian to the French milieu, Vico's theory of history was to undergo a thorough metamorphosis, the one which subsequently established his reputation as a prophet of the modern age.

Best known of the Neapolitan exiles was Vincenzo Cuoco, who wrote a history of the Revolution at Naples which was translated into French in 1807. Believing that he lived in a decadent age, Cuoco consoled himself with the promise of eventual renewal which Vico's grand scheme of history offered. As suspicious of the revolutionary virtue of the intellectuals as he was of the capacity of the comon people to contribute to a revolution, he put his trust in Napoleon, who, in his resemblance to the Vichian monarch of civilization's last stage, seemed

9The Vichian cycle of civilization moves full-circle in three stages: from a primordial organic unity in the family monarchies of the poet-founders, through the social conflict which characterizes the intermediary stage of the heroic and popular commonwealths, to the unstable social equality of the civil monarchies, with whose dissolution the process begins once more. NS, 916-18, 1004-08, 1026, 1046-87, 1097-1106.

'?Benedetto Croce, History of the Kingdom of Naples, trans. Frances Frenaye (Chicago, 1965), 190-220; Enrico De Mas, "Vico and Italian Thought," and Alain Pons, "Vico and French Thought," in Giambattista Vico: An International Sympo- sium, ed. Giorgio Tagliacozzo and Hayden V. White (Baltimore, 1969), 147-85.

"There is no evidence of any direct influence of Cuoco upon Michelet. Michelet's direct contacts were with lesser figures among the Neapolitan exiles-Francesco Salfi, whom Michelet cites for his work on Vico, and Pietro De Angelis, who personally pre- sented Michelet with copies of Vico's writings. For Michelet's references to Salfi and the correspondence from De Angelis to Michelet, see Paul Viallaneix, ed., Oeuvres completes de Michelet, 2 vols. to date (Paris, 1971- ), I, 259-75.

246 PATRICK H. HUTTON

to offer the stability and discipline required in Naples until an op- portunity for a surer, more prudent reconstruction of the Republic might present itself.12 Michelet, of course, had little use for Napoleon, whose reign was all but forgotten in the optimism with which Michelet greeted the post-Napoleonic age. Michelet sensed that he lived in the midst of an historical transition to an era which offered mankind new horizons of consciousness and new possibilities for social progress.13 If he understood the full cycle of Vico's theory of history, he clearly fa- vored its rising stages.

Michelet drew several of his basic ideas directly from Vico's model.14 Essential to his conception of history was Vico's insight that humanity is its own creation. Michelet's argument concerning human development faithfully follows the Vichian dialectic of challenge and recognition. Man creates his own nature in meeting the challenges of his environment. In the process of freeing himself from physical nature he begins to understand his human nature.15 This concept Michelet linked with a second and equally important Vichian insight: humanity is a social creation. The hero in history is the "people" in its collective striving to realize its destiny: social understanding. Humanization is thus a process of socialization. Individual historical figures are but mythological embodiments of social groups at particular stages of their historical development.16 Thus Michelet was able to explain why social history is an appropriate subject of historical inquiry.

Vico also provided Michelet with an appreciation of the way in which social understanding develops in time. The progress toward social understanding results from the interplay of two kinds of per- ception: individual sense and common sense. Individual sense is the ca- pacity to grasp practical realities. Common sense is the capacity to recognize human values. Both are utilitarian and both provide a kind of redemption. Individual sense saves the man in the present. Common sense saves mankind for the future. In their interaction they provide a demonstration of the meaning of universal history. History is a saga of man's heroic struggle for "liberty," i.e., for a comprehensive under- standing of that which he has freely created: his social nature.17

Michelet learned from Vico a way to envision history, but the vision at which he arrived was very much his own. Michelet quite consciously

12Vincenzo Cuoco, Histoire de la revolution de Naples, 2nd ed. (Paris, 1807), esp. iii- xxvi, 1-5, 151-94,393-412.

13For Michelet's intellectual formation, cf. Gabriel Monod, Jules Michelet: Etudes sursa vie et ses oeuvres (Paris, 1905), esp. ch.I.

14Michelet's most important discussion of Vico is found in his "Discours sur le systeme et la vie de Vico," Oeuvres choisies de Vico (1835), in Oeuvres completes de Michelet, I, 283-301. See also Michelet's article, "Vico," in the Biographie universelle, 48 (1827), 362-73; and his Histoire Romaine (Paris, 1843), 4-9.

'5Michelet, "Discours sur Vico," I, 279-80. '6Ibid., I, 280, 288-92. '7Ibid., I, 283, 286-89.

VICO AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 247

adapted the cyclical character of the Vichian dialectic to the needs of his own linear conception of history.18 One might argue that Michelet, living in the midst of a revolutionary era, was bound to express a more optimistic viewpoint about the possibilities of progress. But their differences concerning the direction of historical change and the meaning of progress are more fundamental than those of vantage points in time. Michelet never specifically questions Vico's view of human nature, but he does specifically reject the Augustinian view of man as a concupiscent being, the view to which Vico subscribed.19 While Vico and Michelet both explain progress as a process of humani- zation, they were to draw decidedly different conclusions about the manner in which it was achieved. For Vico, man's creativity is tied to social necessity. As man overcomes his environmental challenges, his sense of necessity recedes. His creative energies dissipate and his social institutions decay. Spirit in Vico's theory of history must eventually return full circle to matter to be born anew.20 For Michelet, in contrast, human creativity acquires an autonomy apart from circumstances of need. Man's quest for "liberty" is based upon a capacity for self- expression as well as a need for self-preservation, a conception which diminishes the utilitarian connotations of social creativity. Spirit in Mi- chelet's theory of history need not return to matter. The possibilities for its growth are limitless.21 It is no surprise, therefore, that Michelet pays scant attention to the Vichian notion of the return of civilization to its origins.22

Whereas Vico's paradigm of history is of a cycle of renewal and decay, Michelet's is of a converging and expanding gyre. For Michelet, man's quest for liberty proceeds in space as well as time. Michelet in- cluded the spatial dimension in his model to convey his belief that the process of humanization converged upon the French historical experience.23 In his Introduction to Universal History, he depicts man's history as a spiritual journey from Asia, where fatalism prevails over liberty, to Europe, where the preconditions for the growth of liberty ap- pear with the urban civilization of the Greco-Roman world. Within Europe, man's struggle for liberty progresses inward in space and up- ward in time, as each major European country transfigures an attribute of an Asian nation at a higher level of social consciousness. The move- ment of history is toward France, whose "genius" it is to reconcile liberty and equality in a perfect harmony.24

'8Ibid., I, 283-84; Michelet, "Introduction a l'histoire universelle" (1831), in Oeuvres completes de Michelet, II, 227-58.

'gMichelet, Histoire de la Revolution francaise, ed. Gerard Walter, 2 vols. (Paris, 1939), I, 24-30; NS, 129, 310, 341.

20NS, 1106. 21Michelet, "Histoire universelle," II, 229-30, 257. 22Ibid., II, 236-37; Michelet, "Discours sur Vico," I, 297-99. 23Michelet, "Histoire universelle," II, 227. 24Ibid., II, 230-53.

248 PATRICK H. HUTTON

Michelet had moved from Vico's conception of history's origins to his own of history's center. Hence the enormous significance which the French Revolution acquired in his model of history. It was in Revolu- tionary France that the process of humanization was for the first time fulfilled. Announced by the Revolution of 1789, its denouement was revealed only in the July Revolution of 1830, the first truly popular upheaval.25 Michelet sought to show that the meaning of the French Revolution had been distorted by historians who focused upon its leaders, especially those identified with the Terror. For Michelet, the chief historical actor of the Revolution was the "people," whose "greatness of heart" enabled the Revolution to succeed. If the Revo- lution thus assumed more nearly anonymous proportions, it lost none of its grandeur. Michelet especially liked to describe the festivals of the Revolution, which manifested the sense of unity of the French as a nation, and the hope of unity for mankind.26 For Michelet believed that the movement of historical progress was about to turn outward to radiate the spirit of the French achievement upon a wider world.27

Michelet vigorously proclaimed the value of Vico's theory of his- tory; Georges Sorel was more sparing in his praise. His intellectual debt to Vico was nonetheless profound. Sorel's initial encounter with Vico came by way of Marx, to whose materialist epistemology Sorel had en- thusiastically subscribed.28 In 1896 he devoted a long critical essay to Vico in which he measured the New Science against Marxian or- thodoxy and found it wanting. Sorel rejected Vico's scheme of a universal history as well as the idealist presuppositions upon which it was based. Insofar as he acknowledged the value of Vico's cyclical model of history, it was its descending phase which interested him. Sorel responded especially to Vico's insight into the relationship be- tween challenge and creativity.29 For he shared with Vico a pessimism about human nature altogether foreign to Marx and his followers, a pessimism he described in terms which echo Vico's perceptions: a con- viction about the weakness of human nature and an identification of creativity with willful courage. These principles for Sorel had a corollary. Because men are weak, they shun the pain of creativity unless they are inspired.30 Such beliefs led Sorel back to Vico's poet-

25Ibid., II, 253-55; Michelet, Histoire de la Revolution, I, 1-8. 26Histoire de la Revolution, I, 1-8, 395-433. 27"Histoire universelle," II, 256-58. 28For discussions of Sorel's intellectual evolution: Irving L. Horowitz, Radicalism

and the Revolt against Reason (Carbondale, 1961); James H. Meisel, The Genesis of Georges Sorel (Ann Arbor, 1951); Isaiah Berlin, "Georges Sorel," The Times Literary Supplement (London), 31 Dec. 1971, 1617-22.

29Sorel, "Etude sur Vico," Le Devenir social, 2 (1896), 786-817, 906-41, 1013-46; esp.785-99,803,807-09,913,925,930-37.

30Sorel, "Letter to Daniel Halevy," Reflections on Violence (1908), trans. T. E. Hulme and J. Roth (New York, 1961), 30-36.

VICO AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 249

founders of civilization, and to the discovery of the guiding concept of his mature social thought: that of the social myth, which Sorel defined as a conviction which moves men to act courageously to create social change.31

While these speculations led Sorel away from the orthodox Marx- ism of his age, they gave him a perspective upon Marxism which set guidelines for the reinterpretation of Marx by European intellectuals in the twentieth century.32 The majority of Sorel's Marxist contem- poraries viewed ideology as a passive reflex of economic preconditions. Vico's theory enabled Sorel to grasp the essential role of human vo- lition in the Marxian dialectic of social development. For Vico's con- cept of mythopoetic creation (verum = factum) is similar to Marx's concept of life activity (praxis), whose meaning Sorel was, among Marxist sympathizers in France, the first to understand.33 Sorel recognized that for Marx, as for Vico, consciousness is formed through man's creative response to the challenges of his environment. Thus con- sciousness plays a positive role in social change, as knowing and acting are aspects of the same process. In Sorel's terms, mythology is the "language of movement" in life activity, the ideal temporal structure of the ordeal of social creation.34

Equally important, Sorel learned from Vico that social progress never follows from the simple imitation of existing ideas, however radical they appear to be. The making of the good society depends not upon a blueprint which is faithfully applied, but upon a vision which assumes form through willful improvisation. Myth is the formative logic of the movement from ideas dimly perceived in the face of challenge to ideas clearly understood as challenge is overcome.35 In this way, Sorel came to understand Marxism itself as a mythology, an insight which he believed to be his most important contribution to Marxism as a developing social philosophy. Whereas orthodox Marxists accepted Marxism as a law of history based upon impersonal economic processes, Sorel preferred to view the doctrine as a mythic vision with which to effect change. The primary value of Marxism as an ideology was not in its transcendent perspective upon the historical process but in its capacity to inspire men to overcome oppressive realities. Indeed, Sorel wondered whether Marxism as a mythology had not expended its creative resources. That is why he ridiculed his Marxist contemporaries in France for quarreling over points of doc-

31 Ibid., 42-50. 32Note, for e.g., Georg Lukacs's acknowledgement of his intellectual debt to Sorel

in his La Thorie du roman (Paris, 1963), 13. 33George Lichtheim, Marxism in Modern France (New York, 1966), 15-16, 26-28. 34Sorel, "Letter to Halevy," 48-5 1. 35Sorel, "Etude sur Vico," II, 812-17, 906-14; Sorel, Materiaux d'une theorie du

proletariat (Paris, 1919), 66-67.

250 PATRICK H. HUTTON

trine which failed to touch the concerns of the working class. The creation of a new society of necessity meant the creation of a new con- sciousness. The need, Sorel asserted, was for a social myth born of present necessities.36

The reinterpretation of Marxism as a mythology of history permit- ted Sorel to reconsider the place of his own age in the development of civilization. It was to Vico that Sorel was to turn once more. For Marx offered an explanation of progress only, while Vico provided one of de- cline as well. Sorel sensed that his own age was one of social dissolution and noted that Marx had accepted the idea of progress uncritically. He had assumed that the coming of the classless society would be the out- come of a vigorous struggle between two dynamic social classes. What would happen, Sorel asked, if the proletarian revolution occurred in an age of decline? 37

In addressing that question, Sorel explained the revolutionary movement in modern French history as one of decline. His analysis is not unlike the Vichian explanation of the transition from the aristocratic to the popular commonwealth.38 Sorel described the French Revolution as a process of social leveling which maintained essential lines of continuity with the past. The French Revolution did not denote the birth of a new civilization, but represented instead the accession of the bourgeoisie to civil rights previously denied them. Sorel explained that most of the leaders of the Revolution were lawyers who already enjoyed a place in the Old Regime, and who were more in- terested in governmental efficiency than they were in liberty. None was more characteristic than Robespierre, who furthered the trend toward the consolidation of public power. Sorel pointed to the ease with which Napoleon had assumed power as proof of how little social change had actually taken place. No new institutions had been created; no new social vision had been born.39

Similarly, Sorel dismissed the activities of the revolutionary move- ment in France in the nineteenth century as manifestations of social decadence. The activities of the Blanquists and of other Jacobin groups were banal in that they called for the completion of a revolution that had never taken place.40 The memory of the French Revolution operated as a powerful myth in the early nineteenth century only be- cause it was closely identified with the military glory of Napoleon. With the defeat of France in the War of 1870-71, the myth of the French

36Sorel, Reflections on Violence, 126-40; Sorel, "The Decomposition of Marxism," in Radicalism and the Revolt against Reason, ed. Irving Horowitz, 232, 241-54.

37Sorel, Reflections on Violence (1908; English 1914), 92-93, 97; Sorel, "Etude sur Vico," II, 930-32.

38"Etude sur Vico," II, 923-24. 39Reflections on Violence, 94-95, 104-11, 170; "Decomposition of Marxism," 228. 40"Etude sur Vico," II, 925; "Decomposition of Marxism," 241, 247-48.

VICO AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 251

Revolution ceased to provide creative inspiration. Hence Sorel contended that the bourgeoisie of his own day spoke of progress in terms of a myth in which it no longer believed.41 Under the circum- stances, Sorel somberly considered the prospect that French civiliza- tion was descending the Vichian road to barbarism.42

Sorel, however, was no more willing to be bound by Vico's model of historical decline than by Marx's model of progress. Hence he argued that social decline was dependent upon passive acceptance of the world as it is. Creative social change need not wait for the historical cycle to run its course, but might be initiated at any time. The option between social creation and social imitation is always open, and the choice made determines the phase of the Vichian cycle that a nation will run. For Sorel, history itself had become a myth of moral choice between renewal and resignation.43

Creating the "path to deliverance" in his own age, Sorel recognized, was no easy task. It included the rejection of accepted approaches to progress, including the rituals of the Revolutionary tradition. Sorel looked to the proletariat for what he believed to be the embryo of a new social myth, that of the general strike. Like the Vichian poets misunderstood by the "scholars in their conceit," the proletariat, Sorel believed, had been ignored by middle-class Marxist intellectuals. It was in the energy of proletarian violence that the consciousness of the new society would grow.44

Despite the insights which Sorel drew from Vico concerning the social uses of mythology, he never abandoned his initial commitment to the dialectical materialism of Marx. The end of human striving for Sorel remained the fulfillment of an economic reality.45 In tying the "will-to-deliverance" to the proletarian struggle for a classless society, he unwittingly committed himself to a conception of universal history, but one which lacked the irony and grandeur of Vico's. In Vico's con- ception, the goal of history was man's recognition of his human nature, a rational nature which Sorel was determined to deny. Hence he was obliged to dwell upon the preconscious phase of creativity closest to material reality. Minimizing the value of rational understanding, Sorel's myth of history required a ceaseless return to primal origins. The result was the denial of the possibility of a developing civilization, i.e., of the transmission and growth of values through social institutions in time.46 It was precisely this possibility which Michelet valued most of all.

41Reflections on Violence, 99-103, 210. 42Ibid., 97. 43Ibid., 117-18; "Etude sur Vico," II, 926, 933n., 937-39. 44Reflections on Violence, 86-92, 98, 115-16, 119-50, 175-76. 45"Etude sur Vico," II, 935; Materiaux d'une theorie duproletariat, 55-56, 131-33. 46"Etude sur Vico," II, 916, 926, 930, 933n., 1031-34, 1040; "Letter to Halevy," 45-

46; "Decomposition of Marxism," 248; Materiaux d'une theorie du proletariat, 67-68.

252 PATRICK H. HUTTON

Michelet was oriented toward the future, yet he looked to the past for mythic guidelines to its promise. Sorel was oriented toward the past, yet he looked to the future for some form of mythic redemption. The differences between their interpretations of the Vichian model of history go deeper than those of temperament or orientation. They are rooted in contrasting conceptions of the meaning of myth itself. For Michelet, Vico's mythology was a vision of universal history. Its value was derived from its insights into the historical process considered as a whole. It was in this spirit that he praised the French Revolution as a manifestation of the growth of human understanding. But for Sorel, Vico's mythology was reduced from vision to fact. Vico's genius was to perceive how myths move men to action. Historical understanding has meaning only as a myth to inspire creative change. It was in this spirit that Sorel declared the irrelevance of the French Revolution for the problem of modern social change.

If the memory of the Revolutionary tradition did not prepare the way for the coming of an "eternal July" as predicted by Michelet, neither has it been eclipsed by more inspiring mythologies as was an- ticipated by Sorel. The memory of the French Revolution has con- tinued to serve as a touchstone to which French historians have returned countless times to reinterpret the nature of their national vision.47 The fact of that continuing return invites a closer look at the cyclical dimension of Vico's theory of history, for it is the basis of his conception of the relationship between social creation and historical understanding. It is also the dimension of Vico's theory of history which both Michelet and Sorel rejected.

The conceptions of mythology presented by Michelet and Sorel mirror the two senses in which Vico understood history. The first was his concern for the existential situation in which man encounters his- tory in the act of its creation. It was the historical significance of this creative encounter that Sorel learned from Vico. But Vico was also concerned about the process of historical change in which man recog- nizes the direction in which history is tending. It was Vico's historical perspective upon the problem of human destiny which inspired Mi- chelet. Vico sought to find a middle way between a deterministic view of history and a view of history without determination. In his "Final Proofs to Confirm the Course of Nations," Vico considers this problem in terms of two rules of law. The first rule is utilitarian; it is designed to meet the practical needs of living in society. But there is a second rule of law which is universal; it affirms the moral ground from which society

47For reviews of the subject, see Alfred Cobban, Historians and the Causes of the French Revolution, rev. ed. (London, 1958); Paul Farmer, France Reviews its Revolu- tionary Origins (New York, 1944); Gerald J. Cavanaugh, "The Present State of French Revolutionary Historiography: Alfred Cobban and Beyond," French Historical Studies, 7 (1972), 587-606.

VICO AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 253

springs. The first rule is temporal; it is modified to meet changing social needs. But the second rule is eternal; it is the unchanging idea of law it- self. The key to Vico's theory of history lies in the interrelationship which he establishes between the two rules. For Vico, it is through the understanding of law in the utilitarian sense that the meaning of universal law becomes clear. It is only through men's private quest for their practical ends that mankind publicly discovers his moral goal: the creation of the common good.48

Vico thus argues that the meaning of history as a vision of the human condition can only be discovered in the phenomena of human existence, in the concrete realities of historical evidence. The under- standing of human nature requires an understanding of historical origins. The "science of humanity" involves not only a recognition of ideas, but also of the way in which these ideas come to light. It is in the realities of history that clear ideas grow from inchoate origins. Had there been no history, there could be no universal vision of human nature.49 Historical progress, therefore, requires a full circle of dis- covery. To create anew is to remember the past. Knowledge of the past provides not a law of history, but an understanding of the nature and purpose of social creation in the fulfillment of God's eternal plan. It is at this point that Vico moves from social history to social theology. For Vico believed that the direction of human intention in history is everywhere the same, and that it is this understanding, whether poetic or rational, which gives man the courage to risk social creation once more. The end of history is not an end to history, but man's affirmation of his moral obligation to preserve himself by creating for the future. The unity of history lies in that affirmation.50

In recent years, historical studies of the French Revolutionary tradition have grown in sophistication, but the tendency to identify that tradition with universal history endures. Vico's name is no longer in- voked, but his conception of the relationship between fact and vision in history remains relevant to the way in which French historians under- stand the meaning of their nation's revolutionary past. Most renowned among historians of the French Revolution is Georges Lefebvre, whose pioneering studies of popular revolution set guidelines for a generation of students of modern French history. Lefebvre's stature among his- torians is based in part upon the quality of his archival research, but even more so upon his capacity to synthesize complex events into a generous and humane interpretation of the French Revolution and of its place in world history. Because of his interest in the "revolution

48NS, 1036-43; also 309, 326, 349-60, 374, 501. 49NS, 313, 329, 331, 338, 348, 368, 779, 897, 1026, 1043. 50NS, 144-45, 198, 245, 332-33, 341-60, 385, 393, 399, 629, 915, 948, 992, 1032,

1039-43,1107-12.

254 PATRICK H. HUTTON

from below," Lefebvre is often identified as a Marxist.51 Like Marx, he is concerned with the economic preconditions of social conflict, several levels of which he delineates with precision in his studies of the Revo- lution.52 But his larger conception of the Revolution as a popular quest to redefine France as a democratic nation probably owes more to Mi- chelet than to Marx. Like Michelet, Lefebvre emphasizes the unity of the French Revolution as a moral quest to affirm universal human rights.53 For Lefebvre, the Revolution represents not only the victory of a social class, the bourgeoisie, but an important stage in man's liberation from fatalism and servitude. Thus he characterizes the Revo- lution's manifesto, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, as a statement of "moral intention," signifying the direction of universal history. "Revolutionary action," he concludes, "takes place in the realm of the spirit." 54

Recently the English scholar Alfred Cobban has attacked Le- febvre's interpretation of the Revolution for its preoccupation with social conflict and catastrophic change. While praising Lefebvre's re- search, Cobban dismisses his interpretation as a myth whose primary value has been to refurbish an idealized vision of the French heritage.55 With arguments reminiscent of Sorel's, Cobban emphasizes the social continuity between the Old Regime and the Revolutionary Era, and the construction of a new political regime which valued order and efficiency more than liberty. In this sense, the Revolution signifies not the dra- matic birth of a new society but the gradual institutional decay of the old order.56

In his reply to Cobban, Lefebvre conceded that it was permissible to speak of the French Revolution as a myth in a moral sense. "I have written," he explained, "that, from the Sorelian viewpoint, the French Revolution presents a mythic character: the convening of the Estates- General spread the 'good news;' it announced the birth of a new society, dedicated to justice, where the quality of life would be improved; in the year II the same myth inspired the sans-culottes; it has endured in our tradition, and as in 1789 and in 1793, it is revolutionary."57 Lefebvre

51Cavanaugh, "The Present State of French Revolutionary Historiography," 587- 88; R. R. Palmer, The World of the French Revolution (New York, 1971), 263.

52Lefebvre, The Coming of the French Revolution, trans. R. R. Palmer (Princeton, 1947).

53Lefebvre, "La Revolution francaise dans l'Histoire du Monde," Etudes sur la Revolutionfrancaise (Paris, 1954), 317-26.

54Lefebvre, The Coming of the French Revolution, 179-87. 55Cobban, "The Myth of the French Revolution," Aspects of the French Revolution

(New York, 1968), 90-108. 56Cobban, The Social Interpretation of the French Revolution (Cambridge, 1964),

esp. 162-73. 57Lefebvre, "Le mythe de la Revolution francaise," Annales historiques de la Revo-

lutionfrancaise, 28 (1956), 345.

VICO AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 255

seems to have been unaware that Sorel himself repudiated this view of the Revolution. If he cites Sorel to explain myth as the birth of a new consciousness through creative ordeal, he also uses the myth of the Revolution as did Michelet to explain its significance for a civilization whose direction is still shaped by a consciousness of its historical origins.

Cobban did not wish to disparage the moral legacy of the French Revolution, but he did question whether Lefebvre's model of the Revo- lution corresponded to the facts that Lefebvre had himself uncovered. "I am tempted to suggest," Cobban commented, "that in another sense also the French Revolution might be called a myth. At first, I must confess, I thought of entitling this lecture, 'Was there a French Revolution?' "58 Cobban, of course, was not denying the reality of the Revolution, but he was challenging the myth of its moral unity, and that of its place in a universal history in which France holds center stage. "This conception, whatever theory it is enshrined in," he con- cludes, "is the real fallacy behind all the myths of the French Revo- lution-the idea that there was 'a' French Revolution, which you can be for or against."59

Interpretations of the relationship between the ethical and the em- pirical dimensions of the French Revolution thus remain unreconciled. Hence Gerald Cavanaugh, summarizing the Cobban-Lefebvre con- troversy, argues that we are presently without a general theory with which to interpret the meaning of the Revolution.60 It is nonetheless still possible to place the debate within the orbit of the Vichian his- torical cycle. In Vichian terms, we should not be surprised that Cobban seeks to explode myths, for his intention is to reduce the French Revo- lution to less heroic proportions. He looks at the Revolution in much the same way that Vico looks at eras of historical decline. To view the Revolution from this perspective is to describe it as a process of demythologizing. Thus he notes the loss of confidence of elites and the vulnerability of inflexible institutions as the values sustaining the old order weakened. Nor should we be surprised that Lefebvre was willing to identify his exacting research with the process of myth making. For he resembles Vico in his vision of history as man's progress toward the discovery of his rational humanity. For Lefebvre, the return to the Revolution was not only to its events, but also to its creative values which renew meaning and inspire confidence for present tasks.

The Lefebvre-Cobban controversy thus illustrates Vico's insight into the relationship between fact and vision in historical under- standing. In Vichian terms, it is a debate which ought never to end. To

58Cobban, "The Myth of the French Revolution," 93. 59Ibid., 108. 60Cavanaugh, "The State of French Revolutionary Historiography," 596-97.

256 PATRICK H. HUTTON

believe that the opposition of fact and vision can finally be reconciled is to believe that we can finally escape our history. For Vico, historical knowledge remains the sine qua non for understanding the human con- dition, and constitutes the wisdom of the pious man: his reverence for the way by which he has come to recognize his humanity.61 For those who share Vico's faith in history, the prospects for further studies of the French Revolutionary tradition appear promising.

The University of Vermont.

61NS, 1112.

Article Contentsp. 241p. 242p. 243p. 244p. 245p. 246p. 247p. 248p. 249p. 250p. 251p. 252p. 253p. 254p. 255p. 256

Issue Table of ContentsJournal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 37, No. 2 (Apr. - Jun., 1976), pp. 193-382Front MatterVolume Information [p. 193]Front Matter [p. 194]Irresistible Compassion: An Aspect of Eighteenth-Century Sympathy and Humanitarianism [pp. 195 - 218]The "Histoire Raisonnee," 1660-1720: A Pre-Enlightenment Genre [pp. 219 - 240]Vico's Theory of History and the French Revolutionary Tradition [pp. 241 - 256]The Eighteenth-Century Origins of the Concept of Scientific Revolution [pp. 257 - 288]Alexis De Tocqueville in Russia [pp. 289 - 306]NotesSocratic Method in Xenophon [pp. 307 - 318]The Four Causes: Aristotle's Exposition and the Ancients [pp. 319 - 322]Chivalric Terminology in Late Medieval Literature [pp. 323 - 334]Millenarianism and Science in the Late Seventeenth Century [pp. 335 - 341]The Conflicting Microscopic Worlds of Berkeley's Three Dialogues [pp. 343 - 349]

Machiavelli Studies since 1969 [pp. 351 - 368]Review-ArticlesProgress and Corruption in the Eighteenth Century Mandeville's "Private Vices, Public Benefits" [pp. 369 - 376]

Books Received [pp. 377 - 382]Back Matter [pp. 342 - 350]