Vico e a objeção moral dirigida a Francis Bacon no De ratione

The reference to Francis Bacon opening Vico’s De ratione (1709) has overshadowed the censorship addressed to him in this work. I argue that, unlike the recent controversy surrounding Bacon's work, the vexatio naturae stigmatized by Vico is not motivated by an objection to the violence exerted on nature, instead aims to refute the plausibility of Bacon's desiderata and invalidate the project of regnum hominis by using precise locutions drawn from Bacon’s works. No other echoes of this criticism addressed to Francis Bacon is to be found in Vico’s later works. On the contrary, in De mente heroica (1732), Vico fully subscribes to the Baconian exaltation of the heroic notion of knowledge, considering it beyond criticism.