looking for one thing and finding another.I was looking for a quotation from Giambattista Vico when I came across a site, Think Exist that lists quotations from famous people. I discovered that my son, Gian was listed among the famous and infamous. I did a double take when I saw his name, thinking, "Wait, that can't be my son?" Sure enough it was my first-born with a quotation taken during his involvement with Provo city's ban on dancing and another about his now defunct band, Midwife Crisis. (http://thinkexist.com/quotes/gian_pierotti/)
Another bit of serendipity came across my desk the other day when I received a flyer from BYU Faculty Center about a discussion group on Alasdair MacIntyre's book, After Virtue. When I was researching for my thesis, I kept coming across various people who quoted MacIntyre. I thought I might read him someday but forgot about it until the flyer appeared. I feel as though I'm being nudged to read him so I signed up for the discussion group. It should be interesting to see what the BYU community makes of a Marxist Roman Catholic's point of view. But MacIntyre's book looks back at Platonic philosophical thought, especially that of communities. And that is what Vico concentrated on too. My thesis examined Vico's sensus communis and how a community could come together in a technological world through digital storytelling.
I recently found an article that also looks at Vico's views on community. (I hadn't come across it for my thesis, and anyway I had so much stuff I couldn't use all that I'd already found!) John Shotter of the University of New Hampshire looked at "Vico, Wittgenstein, and Bakhtin: 'Practical Trust' in Dialogical Communities" (http://www.massey.ac.nz/~alock/virtual/js.htm).
I was recently invited to join a Facebook group and with that venue for communication as well as blogs, what elements of Vichian theory are evident in these communities? There's food for thought, grist for research.
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