Eleonora Saracino

Eleonora Saracino graduated in Philosophy from Sapienza University of Rome. She subsequently obtained a Master’s degree in Philosophy from the University of Nantes and also holds a degree in International Business. She has undertaken periods of study and research in Dublin, Nantes, Aix-en-Provence, and Paris.

The project

Title: Platonic Influences on Vico’s Philosophy of Language

"This project proposes a historical and philological reconstruction of the readings through which Giambattista Vico became acquainted with Plato and Epicurus. To this end, it is based on a careful examination of the sources available to Vico as they circulated within European, Italian, and Neapolitan intellectual culture around 1600 and 1700.

From the second half of the fifteenth century onwards, the Florentine Academy and the intellectual authority of Marsilio Ficino exerted a significant influence at the European level. However, scholarship has not sufficiently examined how and why Vico draws on Platonic and Epicurean–Lucretian (as well as Gassendian) themes in developing his philosophy of language, nor–perhaps most importantly–how he received and reinterpreted them. These influences include readings of naturalism derived from the Cratylus and the Timaeus, elements of empiricism and materialism, and the impact of the new scientific demands advanced by the Investigators. Together, they reflect the cultural ferment of the period and the emergence of a Platonic–Galilean naturalism strongly informed by seventeenth-century Epicureanism.

To pursue this analysis, it is essential to clarify what Vico has in mind when he cites the Cratylus and the Timaeus, as well as to assess the extent to which Marsilio Ficino’s intellectual authority shaped his education. Once Vico’s actual engagement with the ancient authors is established, three of his works will be examined in detail: the Princìpi di scienza nuova intorno alla natura delle nazioni, the De antiquissima Italorum sapientia, and the Orazioni inaugurali. From both a philosophical and philological perspective, the project will analyse how these authors are cited and employed by Vico, and the extent to which he preserves their original doctrines or reshapes them in order to develop his own theoretical framework."

Hosting institution: Centre André Chastel - CNRS

Selective Bibliography

• 2025, Cartesian Linguistics ieri e oggi: note sulla storia dell’innatismo linguistico, in BLITYRI
• 2024, La grammatica nel mondo antico: primi contributi tra Platone e Aristotele, in BLITYRI
• 2023, Plato’s Cratylus by David Sedley. An overview of the Platonic epistemology through his language theories, in BLITYRI