Giovanni Battista Vico (1668–1744) spent most of hisprofessional life as Professor of Rhetoric at the University ofNaples. He was trained in jurisprudence, but read widely in Classics,philology, and philosophy, all of which informed his highly originalviews on history, historiography, and culture. His thought is mostfully expressed in his mature work, theScienza Nuova orThe New Science. In his own time, Vico was relativelyunknown, but from the nineteenth century onwards his views found awider audience and today his influence is widespread in the humanitiesand social sciences.

• 1. Vico’s Life and Influence
• 2. Vico’s Early Works
• 3. The New Science
• Bibliography
  • Vico’s Principal Writings and English Translations
  • Secondary Literature
• Academic Tools
• Other Internet Resources
• Related Entries

1. Vico’s Life and Influence

Giovanni Battista Vico was born in Naples, Italy, June 23 1668, to abookseller and daughter of a carriage maker. He received his formaleducation at local grammar schools, from various Jesuit tutors, and atthe University of Naples from which he graduated in 1694 as Doctor ofCivil and Canon Law. As he reports in his autobiography (Vita diGiambattista Vico), however, Vico considered himself as“teacher of himself,”^[1] a habit he developed under the direction of his father, after a fallat the age of 7 caused a three year absence from school. Vico reportsthat “as a result of this mischance he grew up with a melancholyand irritable temperament such as belongs to men of ingenuity anddepth” (Vita, 111). Vico left Naples in 1686 for Vatolla where,with occasional returns to his home city, he remained for the nextnine years as tutor to the sons of Domenico Rocca. Vico returned toNaples in 1695 and four years later married Teresa Caterina Destitowith whom he had eight children. Of his surviving children (three ofthem died), his younger son Gennaro was a favorite and went on to anacademic career; his daughter Lusia achieved success as a singer andminor poet, and Ignazio is known to have been a source ofdisappointment to him. Of the others (Angela Teresa and Filippo)little is known. Vico was never rich, though he made a living, and thelegend of his poverty derives from Villarosa’s embellishment ofthe autobiography. He did, however, suffer bouts of ill-health, andfailed in his life-long ambition of succeeding to the chair ofJurisprudence at the University of Naples, having to settle insteadfor a lower and poorly paid professorship in Rhetoric. He retainedthis position until 1741 at which time he was succeeded by his sonGennaro. Vico died in Naples on January 22–23, 1744, aged75.

In his own time Vico’s work was largely neglected and generallymisunderstood-he describes himself living as a “stranger”and “quite unknown” in his native city (Vita, 134)-and itwas not until the nineteenth century that his thought began to make asignificant impression on the philosophical world. However,Vico’s thought never suffered from complete obscurity and itsinfluence can be discerned in various traditions of European thoughtfrom the mid-eighteenth century onwards.^[2] In Italy, Vico’s impact on aesthetic and literary criticism isevident in the writings of Francesco De Sanctis and Benedetto Croce,and in jurisprudence, economics, and political theory, his influencecan be traced from Antonio Genovesi (one of Vico’s own pupils),Ferdinando Galiani, and Gaetano Filangieri. In Germany, Vico’sideas were known to Johann-George Hamman and, via his disciple J.G.von Herder, to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich HeinrichJacobi. Vico’s ideas were sufficiently familiar to FriedrichAugust Wolf to inspire his article “G.B. Vico on Homer.”In France, Vico’s thought was likely known to Charles deSecondat, baron de Montesquieu, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and somehave seen his influence in the writings of Denis Diderot, EtienneBonnot, abbé de Condillac, and Joseph Marie, comte de Maistre.In Great Britain, although Vichian themes are intimated in thephilosophical writings of the Empiricists and thinkers of the ScottishEnlightenment, there is no direct evidence that they knew of hiswritings. The earliest known disseminator of Vico’s views in theEnglish-speaking world is Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who was responsiblefor much of the interest in Vico in the second half of the nineteenthcentury.

Vico’s ideas reached a wider audience with a German translationofThe New Science by W.E. Weber which appeared in 1822, and,more significantly, through a French version by Jules Michelet in1824, which was reissued in 1835. Michelet’s translation waswidely read and was responsible for a new appreciation of Vico’swork in France. Subsequently, Vico’s views impacted the work ofWilhelm Dilthey, Karl Marx, R.G. Collingwood, and James Joyce, whousedThe New Science to structureFinnegans Wake.Twentieth century scholarship has established illuminating comparisonswith the tradition of Hegelian idealism, and taken up the relationshipbetween Vico’s thought and that of philosophers in the westerntradition and beyond, including Plato, Aristotle, Ibn Khaldun, ThomasHobbes, Benedict de Spinoza, David Hume, Immanuel Kant, and FriedrichNietzsche. Comparisons and connections have also been drawn betweenVichean themes and the work of various modern and contemporarythinkers,inter alia W.B. Yeats, Friedrich Froebel, MaxHorkheimer, Walter Benjamin, Martin Heidegger, Hans-Georg Gadamer,Jürgen Habermas, Paul Ricoeur, Jean-Francois Lyotard, andAlisdair MacIntyre. As a review of recent and current literaturedemonstrates, an appreciation of Vico’s thought has spread farbeyond philosophy, and his ideas have been taken up by scholars withina range of contemporary disciplines, including anthropology, culturaltheory, education, hermeneutics, history, literary criticism,psychology, and sociology. Thus despite obscure beginnings, Vico isnow widely regarded as a highly original thinker who anticipatedcentral currents in later philosophy and the human sciences.

2. Vico’s Early Works

Vico’s earliest publications were in poetry rather thanphilosophy-the Lucretian poem “Affetti di un disperato”(“The Feelings of One in Despair”) (composed in 1692) and“Canzone in morte di Antonio Carafa” (“Ode on theDeath of Antonio Carafa”) both published in 1693. After hisappointment to Professor of Rhetoric in 1699, Vico began to addressphilosophical themes in the first of sixOrazioni Inaugurali(Inaugural Orations). In 1707 Vico gave a seventhoration-intended as an augmentation of the philosophy of Bacon that hesubsequently revised and published in 1709 under the titleDenostri temporis studiorum ratione (On the Study Methods ofOur Time). Two years later his projected but uncompletedstatement on metaphysics appeared,De antiquissima Italorumsapientia ex linguae latinae originibus eruenda libri tres(On the Most Ancient Wisdom of the Italians Unearthed from theOrigins of the Latin Language). The years that followed saw thepublication of various works, including two replies to criticalreviews ofDe antiquissima (1711 and 1712), a work of royalhistoriography-De rebus gestis Antonii Caraphaei libriquattuor (The Life of Antonio Caraffa) (1716)-Ildiritto universale (Universal Right) (1720–22),and in 1725 and 1731 the two parts of his autobiography which togethercompose theVita di Giambattista Vico scritta da se medesimo(Life of Giambattista Vico Written by Himself). Over thecourse of his professional career, Vico also composed and deliveredlectures on rhetoric to students preparing to enter into the study ofjurisprudence. These survive as student transcriptions or copies ofthe original lectures, and are collected under the titleInstitutiones Oratoriae (1711–1741) (translated asThe Art of Rhetoric) in which Vico’s develops his viewson rhetoric or eloquence, “the faculty of speaking appropriateto the purpose of persuading” through which the orator aims to“bend the spirit by his speech.”^[3]

Although these early writings are increasingly studied as significantworks in their right, they have generally been regarded as importantfor tracing the development of various themes and ideas which Vicocame to refine and express fully in his major and influential work,The New Science. InDe nostri temporis studiorumratione, for example, Vico takes up the theme of modernity andraises the question of “which study method is finer or better,ours or the Ancients?” and illustrates “by examples theadvantages and drawbacks of the respective methods.”^[4] Vico observes that the Moderns are equipped with the“instruments” of “philosophical‘critique’” and “analytic geometry”(especially in the form of Cartesian logic) (DN, 7–9), and thatthese open realms of natural scientific inquiry (chemistry,pharmacology, astronomy, geographical exploration, and mechanics) andartistic production (realism in poetry, oratory, and sculpture) whichwere unknown and unavailable to the Ancients (DN, 11–12).Although these bring significant benefits, Vico argues, moderneducation suffers unnecessarily from ignoring thears topica(art of topics) which encourage the use of imagination and memory inorganizing speech into eloquent persuasion. The result, Vico argues,is an undue attention to the “geometrical method” modeledon the discipline of physics (DN, 21ff.), and an emphasis on abstractphilosophical criticism over poetry. This undermines the importance ofexposition, persuasion, and pleasure in learning; it“benumbs...[the] imagination and stupefies...[the] memory”(DN, 42), both of which are central to learning, complex reasoning,and the discovery of truth. Combining the methods of both Ancients andModerns, Vico argues that education should aim ideally at cultivatingthe “total life of the body politic” (DN, 36): students“should be taught the totality of the sciences and arts, andtheir intellectual powers should be developed to the full” sothat they “would become exact in science, clever in practicalmatters, fluent in eloquence, imaginative in understanding poetry orpainting, and strong in memorizing what they have learned in theirlegal studies” (DN, 19).

This defense of humanistic education is expanded in theOrations, directed “to the flower and stock ofwell-born young manhood,”^[5] where Vico makes a case for modern humanistic education and focuseson a certain kind of “practical wisdom” orprudentia which the human mind, with the appropriatediscipline and diligence, is able to attain. This theme is continuedinDe Antiquissima, where Vico traces the consequences of hisinsight that language can be treated as a source of historicalknowledge. Many words of the Latin language, Vico observes, appear tobe “derived from some inward learning rather than from thevernacular usage of the people.”^[6] Treated as a repository of the past, Latin might be investigated as away of “seek[ing] out the ancient wisdom of the Italians fromthe very wisdom of their words.”(DA, 40).

In the course of pursuing this task, Vico also develops two centralthemes of his mature philosophy: the outlines of a philosophicalsystem in contrast to the then dominant philosophy of Descartesalready criticized inDe nostri temporis studiorum ratione,and his statement of the principle thatverum et factumconvertuntur, that “the true and the madeare...convertible,” or that “the true is precisely what ismade” (verum esse ipsum factum). Vico emphasizes thatscience should be conceived as the “genus or mode by which athing is made” so that human science in general is a matter ofdissecting the “anatomy of nature’s works” (DA, 48),albeit through the “vice” of human beings that they arelimited to “abstraction” as opposed to the power of“construction” which is found in God alone (DA,50–52). Given that “the norm of the truth is to have madeit” (DA, 52), Vico reasons, Descartes’ famous firstprinciple that clear and distinct ideas are the source of truth mustbe rejected: “For the mind does not make itself as it gets toknow itself,” Vico observes, “and since it does not makeitself, it does not know the genus or mode by which it makesitself” (DA, 52). Thus the truths of morality, natural science,and mathematics do not require “metaphysicaljustification” as the Cartesians held, but demand an analysis ofthe causes-the “activity”-through which things are made(DA, 64).

Vico’sVita di Giambattista Vico is of particularinterest, not only as a source of insight into the influences on hisintellectual development, but as one of the earliest and mostsophisticated examples of philosophical autobiography. Vico composedthe work in response (and indeed the only response) to a proposalpublished by Count Gian Artico di Porcía to Italian scholars towrite their biographies for the edification of students. Referring tohimself in the third person, Vico records the course of his life andthe influence of various thinkers which led him to develop theconcepts central to his mature work. Vico reports on the importance ofreading Plato, Aristotle, the Hellenics, Scotus, Suarez, and theClassical poets, and traces his growing interest in jurisprudence andthe Latin language (Vita, 116ff. passim). Vico describes how he cameto “meditate a principle of the natural law, which should be aptfor the explanation of the origins of Roman law and every othergentile civil law in respect of history” (Vita, 119) and how hediscovered that “an ideal eternal law...should be observed in auniversal city after the idea or design of providence” (Vita,122). According to Vico’s own account, his studies culminated ina distinction between ideas and languages. The first, he says,“discovers new historical principles of geography andchronology, the two ideas of history, and thence the principles ofuniversal history lacking hitherto” (Vita, 167), while thelatter “discovers new principles of poetry, both of song andverse, and shows that both it and they sprang up by the same naturalnecessity in all the first nations” (Vita, 168). Taken together,these form the central doctrine ofThe New Science, namely,that there is a “philosophy and philology of the humanrace” which produces “an ideal eternal history based onthe idea of...providence...[and] traversed in time by all theparticular histories of the nations, each with its rise, development,acme, decline and fall” (Vita, 169).

3. The New Science

Many themes of these early works-language, wisdom, history, truth,causality, philology, rhetoric, philosophy, poetry, and the relativestrengths and weaknesses of ancient and modern learning-areincorporated into and receive their fullest treatment in Vico’smajor work,The New Science, first published in 1725 (anedition subsequently known as theScienza Nuova Prima orFirst New Science) and again in a second and largelyrewritten version five years later. Vico published a third edition in1744, which was later edited by Fausto Nicolini and appeared in 1928.Nicoloni is responsible for updating Vico’s punctuation andbreaking the work up into its current structure of chapters, sections,and numbered paragraphs (1112 in all), not originally supplied by Vicohimself, which have been reproduced in many though not all subsequenteditions. Nicolini referred to his edition as theScienza Nuovaseconda-Second New Science (or simplyThe NewScience), under which title the definitive version is knowntoday.

The text consists of an overview (“Idea of the Work”)couched as an explication of a frontispiece depicting a female figure(Metaphysics), standing on a globe of the Earth and contemplating aluminous triangle containing the eye of God, or Providence. Belowstands a statue of Homer representing the origins of human society in“poetic wisdom.” This is followed by five Books and aConclusion, the first of which (“Establishment ofPrinciples”) establishes the method upon which Vico constructs ahistory of civil society from its earliest beginnings in the state ofnature (stato di natura) to its contemporary manifestation inseventeenth century Europe.

In the work, Vico consciously develops his notion ofscienza(science or knowledge) in opposition to the then dominant philosophyof Descartes with its emphasis on clear and distinct ideas, the mostsimple elements of thought from which all knowledge, the Cartesiansheld, could be derived a priori by way of deductive rules. As Vico hadalready argued, one consequence and drawback of thishypothetico-deductive method is that it renders phenomena which cannotbe expressed logically or mathematically as illusions of one sort oranother. This applies not only most obviously to the data of sense andpsychological experience, but also to the non-quantifiable evidencethat makes up the human sciences. Drawing on theverum factumprinciple first described inDe Antiquissima, Vico arguesagainst Cartesian philosophy that full knowledge of any thing involvesdiscoveringhow it came to be what it is as a product ofhuman action and the “principal property” of human beings,viz., “of being social” (“Idea of the Work,”§2, p.3).^[7] The reduction of all facts to the ostensibly paradigmatic form ofmathematical knowledge is a form of “conceit,” Vicomaintains, which arises from the fact that “man makes himselfthe measure of all things” (Element I, §120, p.60) and that“whenever men can form no idea of distant and unknown things,they judge them by what is familiar and at hand” (Element II,§122, p.60). Recognizing this limitation, Vico argues, is at onceto grasp that phenomena can only be known via their origins, or percaussas (through causes). For “Doctrines must take theirbeginning from that of the matters of which they treat” (ElementCVI, §314, p.92), he says, and it is one “great laborof...Science to recover...[the] grounds of truth-truth which, with thepassage of years and the changes in language and customs, has comedown to us enveloped in falsehood” (Element XVI, §150,pp.64–5). Unveiling this falsehood leads to“wisdom,” which is “nothing but the science ofmaking such use of things as their nature dictates” (ElementCXIV, §326, p.94). Given thatverum ipsumfactum-“the true is the made,” or something is truebecause it is made-scienzia both sets knowledge percaussas as its task and as the method for attaining it; or, expressedin other terms, the content ofscienza is identical with thedevelopment of thatscienza itself.

The challenge, however, is to develop this science in such a way as tounderstand the facts of the human world without either reducing themto mere contingency or explaining their order by way of speculativeprinciples of the sort generated by traditional metaphysics. They mustbe rendered intelligible, that is, without reducing them, as did theCartesians, to the status of ephemera. Vico satisfies this demand bydistinguishing at the outset ofThe New Science betweenil vero andil certo, “the true” and“the certain.” The former is the object of knowledge(scienza) since it is universal and eternal, whereas thelatter, related as it is to human consciousness (coscienza),is particular and individuated. This produces two pairs ofterms-il vero/scienza andilcerto/coscienza-which constitute, in turn, theexplananda of philosophy and philology (“history” broadlyconceived), respectively. As Vico says, “philosophy contemplatesreason, whence comes knowledge of the true; philology observes that ofwhich human choice is author, whence comes consciousness of thecertain” (Element X, §138, p.63). These two disciplinescombine in a method or “new critical art”(nuova’arte critica) where philosophy aims atarticulating the universal forms of intelligibility common to allexperience, while philology adumbrates the empirical phenomena of theworld which arise from human choice: the languages, customs, andactions of people which make up civil society. Understood as mutuallyexclusive disciplines-a tendency evident, according to Vico, in thehistory of philosophy up to his time-philosophy and philology appearas empty and abstract (as in the rational certainty of Cartesianmetaphysics) and merely empirical and contingent, respectively. Oncecombined, however, they form a doctrine which yields a full knowledgeof facts where “knowledge” in the Vichean sense means tohave grasped both the necessity of human affairs (manifest in thecausal connections between otherwise random events) and thecontingency of the events which form the content of the causal chains.Philosophy yields the universally true and philology the individuallycertain.

The text ofThe New Science then constitutes Vico’sattempt to develop a method which itself comes to be in the course ofapplying it to human experience, and this takes the form of a historyof civil society and its development through the progress of war andpeace, law, social order, commerce, and government. “Thus ourScience,” Vico says near the beginning of the work, “comesto be at once a history of the ideas, the customs, the deeds ofmankind. From these three we shall derive the principles of thehistory of human nature, which we shall show to be the principles ofuniversal history, which principles it seems hitherto to havelacked” (“Poetic Wisdom,” §368, p.112).Accomplishing this task involves tracing human society back to itsorigins in order to reveal a common human nature and a genetic,universal pattern through which all nations run. Vico sees this commonnature reflected in language, conceived as a store-house of customs,in which the wisdom of successive ages accumulates and is presupposedin the form of asensus communis or “mentaldictionary” by subsequent generations. Vico defines this commonsense as “judgment without reflection, shared by an entireclass, an entire people, and entire nation, or the entire humanrace” (Element XII, §145, pp.63–4). It is alsoavailable to the philosopher who, by deciphering and thus recoveringits content, can discover an “ideal eternal history traversed intime by the histories of all nations” (Proposition XLII,§114, p.57).

The result of this, in Vico’s view, is to appreciate history asat once “ideal”-since it is never perfectly actualized-and“eternal,” because it reflects the presence of a divineorder or Providence guiding the development of human institutions.Nations need not develop at the same pace-less developed ones can anddo coexist with those in a more advanced phase-but they all passthrough the same distinct stages (corsi): the ages of gods,heroes, and men. Nations “develop in conformity to thisdivision,” Vico says, “by a constant and uninterruptedorder of causes and effects present in every nation” (“TheCourse the Nations Run,” §915, p.335). Each stage, and thusthe history of any nation, is characterized by the manifestation ofnatural law peculiar to it, and the distinct languages (signs,metaphors, and words), governments (divine, aristocraticcommonwealths, and popular commonwealths and monarchies), as well assystems of jurisprudence (mystic theology, heroic jurisprudence, andthe natural equity of free commonwealths) that define them.

In addition to specifying the distinct stages through which social,civil, and political order develops, Vico draws on his earlierwritings to trace the origin of nations back to two distinct featuresof human nature: the ages of gods and heroes result from memory andcreative acts of “imagination” (fantasia), whilethe age of men stems from the faculty of “reflection”(riflessione). Vico thus claims to have discovered two kindsof wisdom-“poetic” and“philosophical”-corresponding to the dual nature of humanbeings (sense and intellect), represented in the creations oftheological poets and philosophers, respectively (“PoeticWisdom,” §779, p.297). Institutions arise first from theimmediacy of sense-experience, pure feeling, curiosity, wonder, fear,superstition, and the child-like capacity of human beings to imitateand anthropomorphize the world around them. Since “in theworld’s childhood men were by nature sublime poets”(Element XXXVII, §187, p.71), Vico reasons, nations must be“poetic in their beginnings” (Element XLIV, §200,p.73), so that their origin and course can be discovered by recreatingor remembering the “poetic” or “metaphysicaltruth” which underlies them (Element XLVII, §205, p.74).This is manifest primarily in fable, myth, the structure of earlylanguages, and the formations of polytheistic religion. The beliefsystems of early societies are thus characterized by “poeticmetaphysics” which “seeks its proofs not in the externalworld but within the modifications of the mind of him who meditatesit” (“Poetic Wisdom,” §374, p.116), and“poetic logic,” through which the creations of thismetaphysics are signified. Metaphysics of this sort is “notrational and abstract like that of learned men now,” Vicoemphasizes, “but felt and imagined [by men] without power ofratiocination...This metaphysics was their poetry, a faculty born withthem...born of their ignorance of causes, for ignorance, the mother ofwonder, made everything wonderful to men who were ignorant ofeverything” (“Poetic Wisdom,” §375, p.116).Incapable of forming “intelligible class concepts ofthings”-a feature of human mind realized only in the age ofmen-people “had a natural need to create poetic characters; thatis, imaginative class concepts or universals, to which, as to certainmodels or ideal portraits, to reduce all the particular species whichresembled them” (Element XLIX, §209, p.74).

From this genus of poetic metaphysics, Vico then extrapolates thevarious species of wisdom born of it. “Poetic morals” havetheir source in piety and shame (“Poetic Wisdom,”§502, p.170), he argues, while “poetic economy”arises from the feral equality of human beings and the familyrelationships into which they were forced by need (“PoeticWisdom,” §523, p.180). Similarly, “poeticcosmography” grows from the seeing “the world as composedof gods of the sky, of the underworld...and gods intermediate betweenearth and sky” (“Poetic Wisdom,” §710, p.269),“poetic astronomy” from raising the gods “to theplanets and [assigning] the heroes to the constellations”(“Poetic Wisdom,” §728, p.277), “poeticchronology” out of the cycles of harvest and the seasons(“Poetic Wisdom,” §732, p.279), and “poeticgeography” from naming the natural world through “thesemblances of things known or near at hand” (“PoeticWisdom,” §741, p.285). As the faculty of reason developsand grows, however, the power of imagination from which the earliestforms of human society grew weakens and gives way finally to the powerof reflection; the cognitive powers of human beings gain ascendanceover their creative capacity, and reason replaces poetry as theprimary way of understanding the world. This defines the age of menwhich makes philosophy, Vico reasons, a relatively recent developmentin history, appearing as it did “some two thousand years afterthe gentile nations were founded” (Element CV, §313,p.92).

Since history itself, in Vico’s view, is the manifestation ofProvidence in the world, the transition from one stage to the next andthe steady ascendance of reason over imagination represent a gradualprogress of civilization, a qualitative improvement from simpler tomore complex forms of social organization. Vico characterizes thismovement as a “necessity of nature” (“Idea of theWork,” §34, p.21) which means that, with the passage oftime, human beings and societies tend increasingly towards realizingtheir full potential. From rude beginnings undirected passion istransformed into virtue, the bestial state of early society issubordinated to the rule of law, and philosophy replaces sentiments ofreligion. “Out of ferocity, avarice, and ambition, the threevices which run throughout the human race,” Vico says,“legislation creates the military, merchant, and governingclasses, and thus the strength, riches, and wisdom of commonwealths.Out of these three great vices, which could certainly destroy allmankind on the face of the earth, it makes civil happiness”(Element VII, §132, p.62). In addition, the transition frompoetic to rational consciousness enables reflective individuals-thephilosopher, that is, in the shape of Vico-to recover the body ofuniversal history from the particularity of apparently random events.This is a fact attested to by the form and content ofThe NewScience itself.

Although from a general point of view history reveals a progress ofcivilization through actualizing the potential of human nature, Vicoalso emphasizes the cyclical feature of historical development.Society progresses towards perfection, but without reaching it (thushistory is “ideal”), interrupted as it is by a break orreturn (ricorso) to a relatively more primitive condition.Out of this reversal, history begins its course anew, albeit from theirreversibly higher point to which it has already attained. Vicoobserves that in the latter part of the age of men (manifest in theinstitutions and customs of medieval feudalism) the“barbarism” which marks the first stages of civil societyreturns as a “civil disease” to corrupt the body politicfrom within. This development is marked by the decline of popularcommonwealths into bureaucratic monarchies, and, by the force ofunrestrained passions, the return of corrupt manners which hadcharacterized the earlier societies of gods and heroes. Out of this“second barbarism,” however, either through the appearanceof wise legislators, the rise of the fittest, or a the last vestigesof civilization, society returns to the “primitive simplicity ofthe first world of peoples,” and individuals are again“religious, truthful, and faithful” (“Conclusion ofthe Work,” §1104–1106, pp.423–4). From thisbegins a newcorso which Vico saw manifest in his own time asthe “second age of men” characterized by the“true” Christian religion and the monarchical governmentof seventeenth century Europe.

In addition to his account of the origins and history of civil societydeveloped inThe New Science, Vico also advances a highlyoriginal thesis about the origin and character of Homeric poetry,which he refers to as “The Discovery of the New Homer.”Vico observes that the “vulgar feelings and vulgar customsprovide the poets with their proper materials” (“Discoveryof the True Homer,” §781, p.301), and, given that in theage of heroes these customs constituted a “savage” and“unreasonable” state of human nature, the poetry of Homercannot be the esoteric wisdom or creative act of a single individual,as scholars have assumed, but represents the imaginative universals ofthe Greek people themselves. Homeric poetry thus contains the“models or ideal portraits” which form the mentaldictionary of the Ancients, and explains the place Vico assigns toHomer in the frontispiece where his statue represents the origins ofhuman society in poetic wisdom. Vico thus applies his doctrine of theimaginative universal to the case of Homer and concludes that thoughit “marks a famous epoch in history it never in the world tookplace.” The historical Homer was “quite simply a man ofthe people” (“Discovery of the True Homer, §806,p.308) and quite distinct from the ostensible author of the Odysseyand Iliad who was actually a ”purely ideal poet who neverexisted in the world of nature...but was an idea or a heroic characterof Grecian men insofar as they told their histories in song“(”Discovery of the True Homer, §873, p.323).

Bibliography

Vico’s Principal Writings and English Translations

• Opera di G.B. Vico, 8 volumes in 11, edited by FaustoNicolini, Bari: Laterza, 1911–41.
• Le Orazioni Inaugurali (1699–1707),OnHumanstic Education (Six Inaugural Orations, 1699–1707),translated by Giorgio A. Pinton and Arthur Shippee, Ithaca: CornellUniversity Press, 1993.
• De Nostri temporis studiorum ratione (1709),On theStudy Methods of our Time, translated by Elio Gianturco, with, asan addendum,The Acadamies and the Relation between Philosophy andEloquence [1737], translated by Donald Phillip Verene, Ithaca:Cornell University Press, 1990.
• De antiquissima Italorum sapientia ex linguae latinaeoriginibus eruenda libri tres (1710),On the Most AncientWisdom of the Italians Unearthed from the Origins of the LatinLanguage, includingThe Disputation with “The Giornalede’ Letterati d’Italia” [1711], translated byL.M. Palmer, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988.
• On the Most Ancient Wisdom of the Italians. Drawn out for theOrigins of the Latin Language [1711], translated by Jason Taylor,New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010.
• Institutiones Oratoriae (1711–1741),The Art ofRhetoric, translated and edited by Giorgio A. Pinton and ArthurW. Shippee, Amsterdam and Atlanta: Editions Rodopi B.V., 1984.
• Il diritto universale (1720–22),UniversalRight, translated by Giorgio Pinton and Margaret Diehl, Amsterdamand Atlanta: Editions Rodopi B.V., 2000;A Translation from Latininto English of Giambattista Vico’s Il drittoUniversale/Universal Law, translated by John D. Schaeffer, Lewiston,NY: Mellen Press, 2011. Volume 1:Synopsis of Universal Law(trans. Donald P. Verene) and Book 1:On the One Principle and OneEnd of Universal Law. Volume 2: Book 2:On the Constancy ofthe Jurisprudent, andDissertations.
• Scienza nuova (1725),The First New Science,edited and translated by Leon Pompa, Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 2002.
• Vita di Giambattista Vico scritta da se medesimo(1725–31),The Autobiography of Giambattista Vico with theContinuation by Villarosa [1818], translated by Max Harold Fischand Thomas Goddard Bergin, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1944,revised 1963.
• Scienza nuova seconda (1730/1744),The New Science ofGiambattista Vico, revised translation of the third edition byThomas Goddard Bergin and Max Harold Fisch, Ithaca: Cornell UniversityPress, 1948; Cornell Paperbacks, 1976.
• De mente heroica (1732),On The Heroic Mind: AnOration, translated by Elizabeth Sewell and Anthony C. Sirignano,inVico and Contemporary Thought, ed. Giorgo Tagliacozza,Michael Monney, and Donald Phillip Verene, Atlantic Highlands, NewJersey: Humanities Press, 1979.

Secondary Literature

Monographs

• Berlin, Sir Isaiah, 1976,Vico and Herder: Two Studies in theHistory of Ideas, London: The Hogarth Press.
• –––, 2000,Three Critics of theEnlightenment: Vico, Hammann, Herder, Princeton:Princeton University Press.
• Black, David, 1997,Vico and Moral Perception, New York:Peter Lang.
• Brennan, Timothy, 2014,Borrowed Light: Vico, Hegel, and theColonies, Stanford: Stanford University Press.
• Burke, Peter, 1985,Vico, New York: Oxford UniversityPress.
• Camponigri, A. Robert, 1953,Time and Idea: The Theory ofHistory in Giambattista Vico, Chicago: Regnery.
• Danesi, Marcel, 1993,Vico, Metaphor, and the Origin ofLanguage, Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
• DuBois, Nancy, 2001,Vico and Plato, New York: PeterLang.
• Goetsch, Jr., James Robert, 1995,Vico’s Axioms: TheGeometry of the Human World, New Haven: Yale UniversityPress.
• Grassi, Ernesto, 1990,Vico and Humanism: Essays on Vico,Heidegger, and Rhetoric, New York: Peter Lang.
• Mazzotta, Guiseppe, 1999,The New Map of the World: The PoeticPhilosophy of Giambattista Vico, Princeton: Princeton UniversityPress.
• Mali, Joseph, 2002,The Rehabilitation of Myth: Vico’s‘New Science.’, Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress.
• Marshall, David L., 2010,Vico and the Transformation ofRhetoric in Early Modern Europe, Princeton: Princeton UniversityPress.
• Miner, Robert C., 2002,Vico: Genealogist of Modernity,Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.
• Mooney, Michael, 1985,Vico in the Tradition of Rhetoric,Princeton: Princeton University Press.
• Naddeo, Barbara Anne, 2011,Vico and Naples: The Urban Originsof Modern Social Theory, Ithaca: Cornell UniversityPress.
• Pompa, Leon, 1990,Vico: A Study of the New Science,second edition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Schaeffer, John D., 1990,Sensus Communis: Vico, Rhetoric, andthe Limits of Relativism, Durham: Duke UniversityPress.
• Stone, Harold Samuel, 1997,Vico’s Cultural History: TheProduction and Transmission of Ideas in Naples, 1685–1750(Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History, Volume 73), Leiden:Brill Academic Publishers.
• Verene, Donald Phillip, 1981,Vico’s Science ofImagination, Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
• –––, 1991,The New Art of Biography: AnEssay on the “Life of Giambattista Vico Written byHimself”, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• –––, 1997,Philosophy and the Return to SelfKnowledge, New Haven: Yale University Press.
• –––, 2015, Vico’s ‘NewScience’: A Philosophical Commentary, Ithaca: CornellUniversity Press.
• –––, 2021,The Rhetorical Sense ofPhilosophy, Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Journal Articles

• Barfield, Raymond, 2011, “Vico’s New Science,”Chapter 6 in Barfield,The Ancient Quarrel Between Philosophy andPoetry, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Bayer, Thora Ilin, 2008, “Vico’s Pedagagy(1699–1707),”New Vico Studies, 27:39–56.
• Bayer, Thora Ilin, 2000, “The Future of Vico Studies: Vicoat the Millennium,”New Vico Studies, 18:71–76.
• Berlin, Isaiah, 1985, “On Vico,”PhilosophicalQuarterly, 35: 281–289.
• Costelloe, Timothy M., 1999, “The State of Nature inVico’s New Science,”History of PhilosophyQuarterly, 16 (2): 320–339.
• Dmitriev, Alexander, 2016, “Mikhail Lifshits and the SovietImage of Giambattista Vico,”Studies in East EuropeanThought, 68: 271–282.
• Israel, Jonathan I., 2001, “The Radical Impact in Italy:Giambattista Vico (1668–1744),” in Israel,RadicalEnlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity1650–1750, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Levine, Joseph, 1991, “Giambattista Vico and the Quarrelbetween the Ancients and the Moderns,”Journal of theHistory of Ideas, 52 (1): 55–79.
• Lim, Donghyun L., 2018, “Vico and the Disregation ofHistorical salutis,”History of European Ideas, 44 (1):1–13.
• Mali, Joseph, 1995, “On Giambattista Vico,”History of European Ideas, 21 (2): 287–290.
• Marshall, David L., 2011, “The Current State of VicoScholarship,”Journal of the History of Ideas, 72:141–60.
• Miner, Robert C., 1998, “Verum-factum and Practical Wisdomin the Early Writings of Giambattista Vico,”Journal of theHistory of Ideas, 59 (1): 53–73.
• Pierlott, Matthew, 2000, “Vico’s Principle ofAuthority and the Ideal Eternal History: Transcendence of HumanLimitation,”Dialogue, 42 (2–3):46–52.
• Samuelson, Scott, 1999, “Joyce’s Finnegans Wake andVico’s Mental Dictionary,”New Vico Studies, 17:53–66.
• Trompf, G.W., 1994, “Vico’s Universe: ‘LaProvvedenza’ and ‘la Poesia’ in the New Science ofGiambattista Vico,”British Journal for the History ofPhilosophy, 2 (1): 55–86.
• Perez, Zaragin, 1984, “Vico’s Theory ofKnowledge,”Philosophical Quarterly, 34:15–30.
• Verene, Donald Phillip, 2009, “The Poetic Metaphysics ofJove,”The Review of Metaphysics, 63:307–28.

Edited Collections and Bibliographies of Work on Vico

• Crease, Robert, 1978,Vico in English: A Bibliography ofWritings by and about Giambattista Vico 1668–1744, AtlanticHighlands, New Jersey: Humanities Press.
• Croce, Benedetto, 1947–48,Bibliografia vichiana.Revised and enlarged by Fausto Nicolini. 2 volumes, Naples:Ricciardi.
• Donzelli, Maria, 1973,Contributo alla bibliografia vichiani1948–1970, Naples: Guida.
• Gianturco, Elio, 1968,A Selective Bibliography of VicoScholarship 1948–1968 (Supplement toForumItalicum), Florence: Grafica Toscana.
• Tagliacozzo, Giorgo, 1981,Vico: Past and Present,Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey: Humanities Press.
• Tagliacozzo, Giorgo and Donald Phillip Verene, 1976,Giambattista Vico’s Science of Humanity, Baltimore: TheJohns Hopkins University Press. [Includes “Critical Writings onVico in English,” by Molly Black Verene, pp.457–80, whichexpands the bibliography in Giambattista Vico: An InternationalSymposium.]
• Tagliacozzo, Giorgo, and Donald Phillip Verene and Venessa Rumble,1986,A Bibliography of Vico in English, 1884–1984,Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green State University Press.
• Tagliacozzo, Giorgo and Hayden V. White, 1969,GiambattistaVico: An International Symposium, Baltimore: The Johns HopkinsUniversity Press. [Includes “Bibliography” by Tagliacozza,pp. 615–19.]
• Tagliacozzo, Giorgo, Michael Monney, and Donald Phillip Verene,1979,Vico and Contemporary Thought, Atlantic Highlands, NewJersey: Humanities Press.
• Tateo, Luca, with a foreword by Jaan Valsiner, 2017,Giambattista Vico and the New Psychological Science, London:Routledge.
• Verene, Donald Phillip, 1987,Vico and Joyce, Albany:State University of New York Press.
• Verene, Donald Phillip and Thora Ilin Bayer, 2009,Keys to theNew Science; Translations, Commentaries, and Essays, Ithaca, NewYork: Cornell University Press.
• Verene, Molly Black, 1976, “Critical Writings on Vico inEnglish: A Supplement,”Social Research, 43:904–14.
• –––, 1994,Vico: A Bibliography of Works inEnglish from 1884–1994, Charlottesville: PhilosophyDocumentation Center.

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