Dante e Vico: Teologia politica di Dante. Capitoli della ricezione dantesca

In his introduction to Dante e Vico, József Nagy underlines the interdisciplinary spirit in which his work is written: “la letteratura e la filosofia sono inseparabili e quasi in senso deterministico e permanentemente esercitano tra di loro un'influenza mutua” (15). This statement serves as a guidepost to the crucial project that the author has undertaken in this volume. His aim is to explore whether the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries can be given special status in Dantean critical reception, and if so, why (17). This enormous undertaking involves examining some of the fundamental political ideas espoused by Giambattista Vico and how these were influenced by Dante's own political vision (the latter drawn essentially from the Monarchia, the Convivio, and some relevant cantos of the Commedia). Throughout his work, Nagy summarizes the positions of many of the most authoritative voices on Dante over the course of several centuries, focusing on the eighteenth-century critics (including Vico himself, along with Gian Vincenzo Gravina, Vittorio Alfieri and Luigi Fossati) and the nineteenth-century critics (among these Giacomo Leopardi, Ugo Foscolo, and Gabriele Rossetti).Dante e Vico is divided into four sections: parts 1 and 4 bookend the synopsis of the critical reception of Dante's political views contained in parts 2 and 3. In part 1, “Lecturae Dantis,” Nagy provides a close reading of seven cantos of the Commedia (Inferno I, VIII, IX, XII, and XVII and Purgatorio IX). Part 2, “La teologia politica di Dante: fonti, contesto, ricezione,” explores the relationship between church and state in Dante along with an overview of Dante's idea of Universal Empire in the Monarchia and Commedia and its political and philosophical reception by Ernst H. Kantorowicz and Hans Kelsen, and a brief but valuable digression on the notion of natural law in St. Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae. Two further subsections are devoted to esoteric approaches to literary theory and political philosophy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and some key representatives of the “antidantismo politico e letterario” between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries (267). Part 3, “Alcuni momenti-chiave della ricezione dell'Alighieri: al centro il Settecento,” begins with the much-anticipated examination of Giambattista Vico's reading of Dante. The following subsections cover a variety of modern scholarship on Vico's interpretation of Dante as well as an overview of the literary debate between the eighteenth-century scholars Saverio Bettinelli and Gasparo Gozzi on Dante's importance to the literary canon. Part 4, “La concezione vichiana della storia, ispirata da Dante e Hobbes, da un approccio linguistico, politico e scientifico-filosofico,” examines Vico's philosophy of history along with the influence of both Dante and Hobbes upon it. The afterword, “L'attualità di Dante e di Vico,” reiterates the relevance of Dante and Vico for the contemporary reader.Of interest in parts 2 and 3 is the succinct summing up of the varied interpretations and schools of reception of Dante that arose during the centuries covered in this text. Nagy pinpoints some key players in the pro- and anti-Dante camps that continue to influence reception history, and his overview of modern scholarship on Dante is an invaluable resource to any student of the poet, especially from a political and theological standpoint.Part 3 especially contains an abundance of information that has been laid out concisely, allowing easy access to a wealth of information on the theoretical links between Dante and Vico and the scholarly assessments of that relationship. Nagy also clarifies the connection that Vico draws between Dante and Homer, viewing them as great thinkers “untainted by philosophy,” each on the cusp of new eras of enlightenment following a “barbaric” age (271). Part 4 gives valuable insight into Vico's observations on the course of history and its return (ricorso), the censorship of his works by the church, and the importance of Vico's linguistic theory as a deconstruction of human language (427). The subsections that offer contrasts of Vico's linguistic and political philosophy to Hobbes, Leibniz, and Locke are useful to anyone interested in the fundamental differences between these thinkers.One minor limitation of this mammoth project is the fact that sections or subsections of the second, third, and fourth parts can sometimes digress from the central thesis. Nagy clarifies on more than one occasion that these digressions are necessary to the argument, but the sheer breadth of scope involved in the examination of Vico's relationship to Dante, read through the lens of Vico's contemporaries and in addition to the wealth of scholarship in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries on both Dante and Vico, might overwhelm the casual reader.Nevertheless, Dante e Vico is an excellent tool for any student of Giambattista Vico's political thought. The extensive use of secondary sources on the relationship between Vico and Dante makes it especially valuable for those already familiar with the former and looking to delve deeper into the medieval and early modern influences on his thought. With this work Nagy has provided an important contribution to the field of political philosophy as well as Dante studies.

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