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Vico and Burckhardt

Vico and Burckhardt are known as the persons who criticized bitterly the dominant discourse system of their days, developed their own unique thoughts, and transcended, for being verified as great thinkers posthumously, their own times. Based on this statement, this paper aims at examining the similarities between the both thinkers. At first, Vico and Burckhardt were both criticizers of the present. The former delivered an attack against the Cartesian thought system and the natural science, the latter against the Hegelian philosophy of history and the Rankean historicism. And then they made their own concepts and methods for the completion of their own studies. For example, in case of Vico, ‘eternal ideal history’ (storia ideale eterna), ‘natural law of all nations’, ‘rational political theology [civil theology]’, typifization or patternization, imagination and fantasy, comparison and analogy etc. In case of Burckhardt, ‘transection’ (Querdurchschnitt), ‘repetition’, ‘type’, ‘continuity’, ‘potence’, ‘crisis’, ‘the historical’ (das Geschichtliche), typifization or categorization, contemplation (Anschauung), dialectical approach etc. Grounded on these concepts and methods, Vico and Burckhardt completed consequently their own science named as ‘historical anthropology’ which could be formed only by a sharp insight into the relation of history and human beings. A probable difference between them, if any, is that the former emphasized the historical changeability of human nature and the latter tried to find unchangeable and typical human natures in history. At any rate, Vico definitely contributed to the rise of ‘historicism’ in the next century and Burckhardt had an indirect influence upon the rise and growth of the ‘new cultural history’ of our times. In conclusion, Vico and Burckhardt both belong to the thinkers who exemplify the fact that in the arena of science or ideology a change from one paradigm to another is accomplished not always in a revolutionary mode on a high level of ‘dominant discourse’, but in a continuous way on a middle level of ‘multiple thoughts’.