The First New Science

by Giambattista Vico, Leon Pompa (Editor/Translator)

This account of the basic theme of Vico's mature philosophy explores the question of whether philosophical theories can ever be more than an intellectual expression of the underlying beliefs of an age. The first complete English translation of the 1725 text, Vico's The First New Science ia now accessible to a broad, new readership. It is accompanied by a glossary, bibliography, chronology of Vico's life and expository introduction.

Genres: Philosophy, History, Italy

368 pages, Paperback

First published July 11, 2002

About the author

Giovanni Battista (Giambattista) Vico or Vigo was an Italian political philosopher, rhetorician, historian, and jurist. A critic of modern rationalism and apologist of classical antiquity, Vico's magnum opus is titled "Principles/Origins of [re]New[ed] Science about the Common Nature of Nations" (Principi di Scienza Nuova d'intorno alla Comune Natura delle Nazioni). The work is explicitly presented as a "Science of reasoning" (Scienza di ragionare), and includes a dialectic between axioms (authoritative maxims) and "reasonings" (ragionamenti) linking and clarifying the axioms. Vico is often claimed to have inaugurated modern philosophy of history, although the expression is alien from Vico's text (Vico speaks of a "history of philosophy narrated philosophically"). He is otherwise well-known for noting that verum esse ipsum factum ("true itself is fact" or "the true itself is made"), a proposition that has been read as an early instance of constructivist epistemology. Overall, the contemporary interest in Vico has been driven by peculiarly historicist interests as expressed most notably by Isaiah Berlin, Tagliacozzo, Verene, and Hayden White.

Reviews

[Jeremy]

Read part of it with some colleagues. This explanation is helpful.

Apparently, Joseph Campbell (the monomyth guy) argued that Vico's philosophy should guide interpretations of Joyce's Finnegans Wake (1939).

[Steven H · Rating 5 out of 5]

THE FIRST MODERN "PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY”

Giambattista Vico (1668-1744) was an Italian political philosopher, rhetorician, historian, and jurist, who also wrote 'The Autobiography of Giambattista Vico.' He observes, "This false opinion of their great antiquity was caused among the Egyptians by a property of the human mind---that of being indefinite---by which it is often led to believe that the things it does not know are vastly greater than in fact they are. The Egyptians were in this respect like the Chinese..." (Pg. 31-32) He adds, "the Hebrews were the first people in our world... [where] in the sacred history they have truthfully preserved their memories from the beginning of the world." (Pg. 35)

He suggests, "granted Livy's generalization ... that the asylums [of Rome] were 'an old counsel of founders of cities'... as Romulus founded the city of Rome within the asylum opened in the clearing---this hypothesis gives us also the history of all the other cities of the world in times we have so far despaired of knowing. This then is an instance of an ideal eternal history traversed in time by the histories of all nations." (Pg. 57)

Later, he adds, "sacred history assures us that the world is almost young in contrast to the antiquity with which it was credited by the Chaldeans, Scythians, Egyptians, and in our own day by the Chinese. This is a great proof of the truth of sacred history." (Pg. 61) He asserts, "Sacred history is more ancient than all the most ancient profane histories that have come down to us, for it narrates in great detail and over a period of more than eight hundred years the state of nature under the patriarchs; that is, the state of the families... Of this family state profane history has told us nothing or little, and that little quite confused. This axiom proves the truth of sacred history ... for the Hebrews preserved their memories from the very beginning of the world." (Pg. 68)

He summarizes, "all nations, barbarous as well as civilized... keep these three human customs: all have some religion, all contract solemn marriages, all bury their dead... by the axiom that 'uniform ideas, born among peoples unknown to each other, must have a common ground of truth,' it must have been dictated to all nations that from these three institutions humanity began among them all... so that the world should not again become a bestial wilderness." (Pg. 97)

He asserts, "When, working in superhuman ways, God had revealed and confirmed the truth of the Christian religion by opposing the virtue of the martyrs to the power of Rome, and the teaching of the Fathers, together with the miracles, to the vain wisdom of Greece, and when armed nations were about to arise on every hand destined to combat the true divinity of its Founder, he permitted a new order of humanity to be born among the nations in order that [the true religion] might be firmly established according to the natural course of human institutions themselves." (Pg. 397)

Vico's work is a necessary "starting point" for all persons wanting a comprehensive picture of the development of the philosophy of history.

[Mostafa Shalash · Rating 4 out of 5]

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