Vico e la «temperatura»: sull’idea di Stato misto nel Diritto Universale

Abstract

A scholar of Vico for years, the author analyses an issue which has not been very much dealt with in secondary Vichian literature: the issue of forms of Government in Universal Right. His thesis is that, although Vico cannot be considered as a theorist of “mixed” State, in Universal Right he elaborates a complex version of the “temperature” (the “mixtura”) which is functional to the general ethical-metaphysical system of the work, a system whose aim is that of proving the founding superiority of virtue upon strength, reason upon violence. Such system will then be replaced by a more purely anthropological point of view, in the various versions of Scienza Nuova.