Only what humans make can be truly known, since maker and object coincide

Evidence

The principle of verum-factum is one of the cornerstones of Vico’s theory of knowledge. It is perhaps best understood not so much in the interpretation that Gramsci attributes here to Croce that knowledge is a form of doing, as in its inverse, that doing is a means of knowing. Contrary to the prevailing Cartesianism, Vico maintained that only the object of human action (“factum”) could be truly known in that there was here an identity of subject and object absent in our dealings with the world of natural science. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 2544

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the verum-factum principle and its contrast with Cartesian epistemology.
• XREF: Connects to the construction-of-the-Other theme: what is knowable is what is humanly made, which bears on how Orientalist knowledge claims are treated.