Vico and the moral objection addressed to Francis Bacon in De ratione/Vico e a objecao moral dirigida a Francis Bacon no De ratione

The reference to Francis Bacon opening Vico's De ratione (1709) has over shadowed the censor ship addressed to him in this work. I argue that, unlike the recent controversy surrounding Bacon's work, the vexatio natura estigmatized 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 criticis maddressed to Francis Baconis 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 be yond criticism.