Beyond the Two-Sciences Settlement: Giambattista Vico's Critique of the Nature-Politics Opposition
Political Theory: An International Journal of Political Philosophy
Published online on August 05, 2013
Abstract
The Perestroika movement recently reopened longstanding debates about the scholarly and political implications of orienting political science research around a scientific ideal derived from the natural sciences. Many Perestroikans, like earlier critics of "naturalized" political science, turned to ontology, opposing the political world to the natural world to espouse what I call a two-sciences settlement: a separate-but-equal arrangement in which political science and natural science would each operate according to distinct methodological imperatives dictated by their distinctive objects. In this article, I critically appraise this divided settlement and the two-worlds ontology that underwrites it. I recover an alternative, less dualistic vision of politics and nature from Giambattisa Vico, challenging received views of him as an early architect of the two-sciences settlement. Vico’s vision of ontological hybridity, I argue, offers more robust support to the Perestroikan goals of methodological pluralism and political engagement than the two-worlds ontology Perestroikans often invoked.