Vico preserved the subjectivity of nature, unlike his contemporaries.

Evidence

Thus, despite his cyclical theory of the rise and fall of civilizations, which was similar to Machiavelli’s, he was unique in seeing that human activity was the key to understanding historical development. Vico had understood that praxis and the domination of nature were not the same. Although he separated man and nature, he did so in a way that avoided placing one above the other. By insisting on the subjectivity of man, he preserved the potentiality of the subjectivity of nature. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 777

Categorization

• QUESTION: Worth chasing: how coherent is it that Vico both separated man and nature yet preserved nature’s subjectivity — what did Horkheimer actually attribute to Vico here?