Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ

“As Augustine does at greater length in the City of God, Vico in De constantia philosophiae determines what in pagan philosophy is in agreement with Christian doctrine. He says that first of all skepticism must be diminished, above all in moral doctrine. Vico does not here present an argument against skepticism. He simply claims that there are notions of the eternally true, possessed universally by the human race. He says that skeptics are dan- gerous to the civil order because they will prove there is justice in human affairs one day and refute it the next. This would make the skeptics worse than the poets in Plato’s criticism in the Republic. The poets are dangerous to society because they present the gods as involved in both good and bad conduct and have no standard of virtue by which to judge. The poets are naive, but the skeptics, as Vico portrays them, are deliberate in their attempt to show there is no moral standard.”