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This is KZSU Stanford.
Welcome to entitled opinions.
My name is Robert Harrison.
We're coming to you from the Stanford campus.
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We are in the sixth year of our broadcast and we have yet to do a show on the thinker who is dear to me than any of those we've covered on this program to date.
I'm in Jumbati, Stavico, the 18th century Neopolitan whose name I have invoked from time to time.
We will be devoting a show to him sometime soon. I promise.
Meanwhile, let me share with you a quote from his great book, The New Science, where Vico probes, the poetic origins of human culture,
in all its fundamental aspects and institutions. Here's the quote.
So that as rational metaphysics teaches that man becomes all things by understanding them, this imaginative metaphysics of ours shows that man becomes all things by not understanding them.
Perhaps the latter proposition is truer than the former. For when man understands, he extends his mind and takes in the things, but when he does not understand, he makes the things out of himself and becomes them by transforming himself into them.
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