Why did Giambattista Vico believe humans can understand the âworld of nationsâ?
Giambattista Vico argued that humans can possess true knowledge of the "world of nations" because they are the creators of that world.12
This perspective is rooted in his fundamental principle that to truly know something, one must have made it. Vico distinguished between the natural world, which is the creation of God and thus only fully knowable by Him, and the historical world of human institutions, actions, and societies, which humans have constructed themselves.21
By establishing this distinction, Vico challenged the prevailing Cartesian methodology of his time, which sought to apply the same deductive logic used in the natural sciences to the study of history. Instead, he proposed that historians must use their imagination to enter the spirit of past ages, re-creating the attitudes and mentalities of those who lived in them, rather than imposing modern, anachronistic interpretations on earlier civilizations. Through this approach, Vico aimed to establish history as a reputable and certain discipline.321