We examine significant parallels between Surrealist art theory and Vico’s understanding of primitive metaphor, centering on a 1933 article on Vico by the Czech Surrealist Zdenko Reich, who recognized that Vico’s understanding of primitive thought shared notable similarities with the Surrealists’ intent to effect an epistemological revolution by re-establishing poetic thought as the central mode of human understanding. The Surrealists sought to undermine the rationalist assumptions of Western philosophy and revive the “poetic ideas of the first men” through the use of disjunctive juxtaposition, a technique Reich identified with Vichian primitive metaphor. Also like Vico, Reich and the Surrealists stressed the concrete and sensory foundations of thought as revealed in language, and saw the human body as the primary mediating vehicle of poetic thought. In this regard the Surrealists can be seen as effecting a complete embrace of Vico’s concept of metaphor in their attempt to re-organize reality on poetic terms.

This article argues that Vico’s theory of history should be construed as an ontological constructionist account as opposed to its usual realist interpretation. In support of this interpretation I draw upon two important concepts issuing from the body of the Scienza nuova: the notion of ‘‘storia’’ and the verum ipsum factum principle. Both concepts are not only consistent with an ontological constructionist interpretation of Vico’s theory of history but function as powerful explanatory devices in the context of such an interpretation. I show the advantage this interpretation holds for overcoming one of the main charges brought against the Scienza nuova when it is interpreted as presenting a realist conception of history. In highlighting the possibility and, indeed, textual advantages of construing Vico’s theory of history as an ontological constructionist account I claim that Vico may have anticipated the constructionist tradition by some 200 years and may be considered as the founder of constructionism in the philosophy of history.