Giambattista Vico (born Giovan Battista Vico ; ; 23 June 1668 – 23 January 1744) was an
Italian
Italian(s) may refer to:
* Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries
** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom
** Italian language, a Romance language
*** Regional Ita ...
philosopher,
rhetorician
Rhetoric () is the art of persuasion, which along with grammar and logic (or dialectic), is one of the three ancient arts of discourse. Rhetoric aims to study the techniques writers or speakers utilize to inform, persuade, or motivate parti ...
,
historian
A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the st ...
, and
jurist during the
Italian Enlightenment. He criticized the expansion and development of modern
rationalism
In philosophy, rationalism is the epistemological view that "regards reason as the chief source and test of knowledge" or "any view appealing to reason as a source of knowledge or justification".Lacey, A.R. (1996), ''A Dictionary of Philosophy ...
, finding
Cartesian analysis and other types of
reductionism impractical to human life, and he was an apologist for
classical antiquity
Classical antiquity (also the classical era, classical period or classical age) is the period of cultural history between the 8th century BC and the 5th century AD centred on the Mediterranean Sea, comprising the interlocking civilizations of ...
and the
Renaissance humanities, in addition to being the first expositor of the fundamentals of
social science
Social science is one of the branches of science, devoted to the study of societies and the relationships among individuals within those societies. The term was formerly used to refer to the field of sociology, the original "science of so ...
and of
semiotics
Semiotics (also called semiotic studies) is the systematic study of sign processes ( semiosis) and meaning making. Semiosis is any activity, conduct, or process that involves signs, where a sign is defined as anything that communicates something ...
. He is recognised as one of the first
Counter-Enlightenment
The Counter-Enlightenment refers to a loose collection of intellectual stances that arose during the European Enlightenment in opposition to its mainstream attitudes and ideals. The Counter-Enlightenment is generally seen to have continued from t ...
figures in history.
The Latin
aphorism
An aphorism (from Greek ἀφορισμός: ''aphorismos'', denoting 'delimitation', 'distinction', and 'definition') is a concise, terse, laconic, or memorable expression of a general truth or principle. Aphorisms are often handed down by ...
''Verum esse ipsum factum'' ("truth is itself something made") coined by Vico is an early instance of
constructivist epistemology. He inaugurated the modern field of the
philosophy of history, and, although the term ''philosophy of history'' is not in his writings, Vico spoke of a "history of philosophy narrated philosophically." Although he was not an
historicist
Historicism is an approach to explaining the existence of phenomena, especially social and cultural practices (including ideas and beliefs), by studying their history, that is, by studying the process by which they came about. The term is widely u ...
, contemporary interest in Vico usually has been motivated by historicists, such as
Isaiah Berlin, a philosopher and
historian of ideas
Intellectual history (also the history of ideas) is the study of the history of human thought and of intellectuals, people who conceptualize, discuss, write about, and concern themselves with ideas. The investigative premise of intellectual histor ...
,
Edward Said
Edward Wadie Said (; , ; 1 November 1935 – 24 September 2003) was a Palestinian-American professor of literature at Columbia University, a public intellectual, and a founder of the academic field of postcolonial studies.Robert Young, ''Whit ...
, a
literary critic, and
Hayden White
Hayden V. White (July 12, 1928 – March 5, 2018) was an American historian in the tradition of literary criticism, perhaps most famous for his work '' Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe'' (1973/2014).
Career
...
, a metahistorian.
Vico's intellectual ''
magnum opus
A masterpiece, ''magnum opus'' (), or ''chef-d’œuvre'' (; ; ) in modern use is a creation that has been given much critical praise, especially one that is considered the greatest work of a person's career or a work of outstanding creativity, ...
'' is the book ''
Scienza Nuova'' or ''New Science'' (1725), which attempts a systematic organization of the
humanities
Humanities are academic disciplines that study aspects of human society and culture. In the Renaissance, the term contrasted with divinity and referred to what is now called classics, the main area of secular study in universities at the t ...
as a single science that recorded and explained the historical cycles by which societies rise and fall.
Biography
Born to a bookseller in Naples, Italy, Giovan Battista Vico attended several schools, but ill health and dissatisfaction with the
scholasticism of the
Jesuits led to his being educated at home by tutors. Evidence from his autobiographical work indicates that Vico likely was an
autodidact educated under paternal influence, during a three-year absence from school, consequence of an accidental fall when the boy was seven years old.
Giovan Battista's formal education was at the
University of Naples
The University of Naples Federico II ( it, Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II) is a public university in Naples, Italy. Founded in 1224, it is the oldest public non-sectarian university in the world, and is now organized into 26 depar ...
from which he graduated in 1694, as Doctor of Civil and Canon Law.
In 1686, after surviving a bout of
typhus
Typhus, also known as typhus fever, is a group of infectious diseases that include epidemic typhus, scrub typhus, and murine typhus. Common symptoms include fever, headache, and a rash. Typically these begin one to two weeks after exposure. ...
, he accepted a job as a tutor, in Vatolla, south of
Salerno, which became a nine-year professional engagement that lasted till 1695.
Four years later, in 1699, Vico married Teresa Caterina Destito, a childhood friend, and accepted a chair in
rhetoric at the University of Naples, which he held until ill-health retirement, in 1741.
Throughout his academic career, Vico would aspire to, but never attain, the more respectable chair of
jurisprudence
Jurisprudence, or legal theory, is the theoretical study of the propriety of law. Scholars of jurisprudence seek to explain the nature of law in its most general form and they also seek to achieve a deeper understanding of legal reasoning a ...
; however, in 1734, he was appointed
historiographer royal Historiographer Royal is the title of an appointment as official chronicler or historian of a court or monarch. It was initially particularly associated with the French monarchy, where the post existed from at least 1550, but in the later 16th and 1 ...
, by
Charles III
Charles III (Charles Philip Arthur George; born 14 November 1948) is King of the United Kingdom and the 14 other Commonwealth realms. He was the longest-serving heir apparent and Prince of Wales and, at age 73, became the oldest person t ...
, King of Naples, at a salary greater than he had earned as a university professor.
The rhetoric and humanism of Vico
Vico's version of
rhetoric is a product of his
humanistic and
pedagogic
Pedagogy (), most commonly understood as the approach to teaching, is the theory and practice of learning, and how this process influences, and is influenced by, the social, political and psychological development of learners. Pedagogy, taken as ...
concerns. In the 1708 commencement speech ''De Nostri Temporis Studiorum Ratione'' (''On the Order of the Scholarly Disciplines of Our Times''), Vico said that whoever "intends a career in public life, whether in the courts, the senate, or the pulpit" should be taught to "master the art of topics and
odefend both sides of a controversy, be it on Nature, Man, or politics, in a freer and brighter style of expression, so he can learn to draw on those arguments which are most probable and have the greatest degree of
verisimilitude
In philosophy, verisimilitude (or truthlikeness) is the notion that some propositions are closer to being true than other propositions. The problem of verisimilitude is the problem of articulating what it takes for one false theory to be clo ...
"; yet, in ''
Scienza Nuova'', Vico denounced defending both sides in controversies as ''false eloquence''.
As Royal Professor of Latin Eloquence, Vico prepared students for higher studies in the fields of Law and of
Jurisprudence
Jurisprudence, or legal theory, is the theoretical study of the propriety of law. Scholars of jurisprudence seek to explain the nature of law in its most general form and they also seek to achieve a deeper understanding of legal reasoning a ...
; thus, his lessons were about the formal aspects of the canon of rhetoric, including the arrangement and the delivery of an argument. Yet he chose to emphasize the
Aristotelian connection of rhetoric with
logic
Logic is the study of correct reasoning. It includes both formal and informal logic. Formal logic is the science of deductively valid inferences or of logical truths. It is a formal science investigating how conclusions follow from premise ...
and
dialectic, thereby placing ends (rhetoric) at their center. Vico's objection to modern rhetoric is that it is disconnected from common sense (''sensus communis''), defined as the "worldly sense" that is common to all men.
In lectures and throughout the body of his work, Vico's rhetoric begins from a central
argument (''medius terminus''), which is to be clarified by following the order of things as they arise in our experience.
Probability
Probability is the branch of mathematics concerning numerical descriptions of how likely an event is to occur, or how likely it is that a proposition is true. The probability of an event is a number between 0 and 1, where, roughly speakin ...
and circumstance retain their proportionate importance, and
discovery
Discovery may refer to:
* Discovery (observation), observing or finding something unknown
* Discovery (fiction), a character's learning something unknown
* Discovery (law), a process in courts of law relating to evidence
Discovery, The Discover ...
—reliant upon topics (''loci'')—supersedes
axioms derived through reflective, abstract thought. In the tradition of classical Roman rhetoric, Vico sets out to educate the
orator
An orator, or oratist, is a public speaker, especially one who is eloquent or skilled.
Etymology
Recorded in English c. 1374, with a meaning of "one who pleads or argues for a cause", from Anglo-French ''oratour'', Old French ''orateur'' (14th ...
(rhetorician) as the transmitter of the ''oratio'', a speech with ''ratio'' (reason) at the centre. What is essential to the oratorical art (Gr. ῥητορική, ''rhētorikē'') is the orderly link between common sense and an end commensurate with oratory; an end that is not imposed upon the
imagination from above (in the manner of the moderns and dogmatic Christianity), but that is drawn from common sense, itself. In the tradition of
Socrates
Socrates (; ; –399 BC) was a Greek philosopher from Athens who is credited as the founder of Western philosophy and among the first moral philosophers of the ethical tradition of thought. An enigmatic figure, Socrates authored no te ...
and
Cicero
Marcus Tullius Cicero ( ; ; 3 January 106 BC – 7 December 43 BC) was a Roman statesman, lawyer, scholar, philosopher, and academic skeptic, who tried to uphold optimate principles during the political crises that led to the esta ...
, Vico's true orator will be midwife to the birth of "the true" (as an idea) from "the certain", the ignorance in the mind of the student.
Rediscovery of "the most ancient wisdom" of the senses, a wisdom that is ''humana stultitia'' ("human foolishness"), Vico's emphases on the importance of civic life and of professional obligations are in the humanist tradition. He would call for a maieutic oratory art against the grain of the modern privilege of the dogmatic form of reason, in what he called the "geometrical method" of
René Descartes
René Descartes ( or ; ; Latinized: Renatus Cartesius; 31 March 1596 – 11 February 1650) was a French philosopher, scientist, and mathematician, widely considered a seminal figure in the emergence of modern philosophy and science. Ma ...
and the logicians at the
Port-Royal-des-Champs
Port-Royal-des-Champs was an abbey of Cistercian nuns in Magny-les-Hameaux, in the Vallée de Chevreuse southwest of Paris that launched a number of culturally important institutions.
History
The abbey was established in 1204, but became fa ...
abbey.
Response to the Cartesian method
As he relates in his autobiography, Vico returned to Naples from Vatolla to find "the physics of Descartes at the height of its renown among the established men of letters." Developments in both
metaphysics
Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that studies the fundamental nature of reality, the first principles of being, identity and change, space and time, causality, necessity, and possibility. It includes questions about the nature of conscio ...
and the natural sciences abounded as the result of Cartesianism. Widely disseminated by the Port Royal Logic of
Antoine Arnauld
Antoine Arnauld (6 February 16128 August 1694) was a French Catholic theologian, philosopher and mathematician. He was one of the leading intellectuals of the Jansenist group of Port-Royal and had a very thorough knowledge of patristics. Cont ...
and
Pierre Nicole
Pierre Nicole (19 October 1625 – 16 November 1695) was one of the most distinguished of the French Jansenists.
Life
Born in Chartres, he was the son of a provincial barrister, who took in charge his education. Sent to Paris in 1642 to study t ...
, Descartes's method was rooted in verification: the only path to truth, and thus knowledge, was through axioms derived from observation. Descartes's insistence that the "sure and indubitable" (or, "clear and distinct") should form the basis of reasoning had an obvious impact on the prevailing views of logic and discourse. Studies in rhetoric—indeed all studies concerned with civic discourse and the realm of probable truths—met with increasing disdain.
Vico's humanism and professional concerns prompted an obvious response that he would develop throughout the course of his writings: the realms of verifiable truth and human concern share only a slight overlap, yet reasoning is required in equal measure in both spheres. One of the clearest and earliest forms of this argument is available in the ''De Italorum Sapientia'', where Vico argues that
Vico's position here and in later works is not that the Cartesian method is irrelevant, but that its application cannot be extended to the civic sphere. Instead of confining reason to a string of verifiable axioms, Vico suggests (along with the ancients) that appeals to ''phronēsis'' (φρόνησις or
practical wisdom) must also be made, and likewise appeals to the various components of
persuasion that comprise rhetoric. Vico would reproduce this argument consistently throughout his works, and would use it as a central
tenet of the ''
Scienza Nuova''.
The principle of ''Verum factum''
Vico is best known for his ''verum factum'' principle, first formulated in 1710 as part of his ''De antiquissima Italorum sapientia, ex linguae latinae originibus eruenda'' (1710) ("Of the most ancient wisdom of the Italians, unearthed from the origins of the Latin language"). The principle states that truth is verified through creation or invention and not, as per
Descartes, through observation: "The criterion and rule of the true is to have made it. Accordingly, our clear and distinct idea of the mind cannot be a criterion of the mind itself, still less of other truths. For while the mind perceives itself, it does not make itself." This criterion for truth would later shape the history of
civilization
A civilization (or civilisation) is any complex society characterized by the development of a state, social stratification, urbanization, and symbolic systems of communication beyond natural spoken language (namely, a writing system).
...
in Vico's opus, the ''
Scienza Nuova'' (''The New Science'', 1725), because he would argue that civil life—like
mathematics—is wholly constructed.
The ''Scienza Nuova''
![Vico La scienza nuova](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/12/Vico_La_scienza_nuova.gif)
''The New Science'' (1725, ''Scienza Nuova'') is his major work and has been highly influential in the philosophy of history, and for historicists such as Isaiah Berlin and Hayden White.
Influence
Samuel Beckett's first published work, in the selection of critical essays on
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influential and important writers of ...
entitled ''
'', is "Dante... Bruno. Vico.. Joyce". In it, Beckett sees a profound influence of Vico's philosophy and poetics—as well the cyclical form of the ''Scienza Nuova''—on the avant-garde compositions of Joyce, and especially the titular Work in Progress, viz. ''
Finnegans Wake
''Finnegans Wake'' is a novel by Irish writer James Joyce. It is well known for its experimental style and reputation as one of the most difficult works of fiction in the Western canon. It has been called "a work of fiction which combines a bod ...
''.
In ''Knowledge and Social Structure'' (1974), Peter Hamilton identified Vico as the "sleeping partner" of the
Age of Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment or the Enlightenment; german: Aufklärung, "Enlightenment"; it, L'Illuminismo, "Enlightenment"; pl, Oświecenie, "Enlightenment"; pt, Iluminismo, "Enlightenment"; es, La Ilustración, "Enlightenment" was an intel ...
.
Despite having been relatively unknown in his 18th-century time, and read only in his native Naples, the ideas of Vico are predecessors to the ideas of the intellectuals of the Enlightenment. Moreover, recognition of Vico's intellectual influence began in the 19th century, when the French Romantic historians used his works as methodological models and guides.
In ''
Capital: Critique of Political Economy'' (1867),
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 ...
's mention of Vico indicates their parallel perspectives about history, the role of historical actors, and an historical method of narrative. Marx and Vico saw
social-class warfare as the means by which men achieve the end of
equal rights; Vico called that time the "Age of Men". Marx concluded that such a state of affairs is the optimal end of social change in a society, but Vico thought that such complete equality of rights would lead to socio-political chaos and the consequent collapse of society. In that vein, Vico proposed a social need for religion, for a supernatural
divine providence to keep order in human society.
In ''
Orientalism'' (1978),
Edward Said
Edward Wadie Said (; , ; 1 November 1935 – 24 September 2003) was a Palestinian-American professor of literature at Columbia University, a public intellectual, and a founder of the academic field of postcolonial studies.Robert Young, ''Whit ...
acknowledged his scholar's debt to Vico,
whose "ideas anticipate and later infiltrate the line of German thinkers I am about to cite. They belong to the era of
Herder and
Wolf
The wolf (''Canis lupus''; : wolves), also known as the gray wolf or grey wolf, is a large canine native to Eurasia and North America. More than thirty subspecies of ''Canis lupus'' have been recognized, and gray wolves, as popularly un ...
, later to be followed by
Goethe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832) was a German poet, playwright, novelist, scientist, statesman, theatre director, and critic. His works include plays, poetry, literature, and aesthetic criticism, as well as tr ...
,
Humboldt,
Dilthey Dilthey is a surname. Notable people with the surname include:
* Helmut Dilthey (1894–1918), German First World War flying ace
*Karl Dilthey (1839–1907) German classical scholar and archaeologist
*Wilhelm Dilthey
Wilhelm Dilthey (; ; 19 No ...
,
Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (; or ; 15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900) was a German philosopher, prose poet, cultural critic, philologist, and composer whose work has exerted a profound influence on contemporary philosophy. He began his car ...
,
Gadamer
Hans-Georg Gadamer (; ; February 11, 1900 – March 13, 2002) was a German philosopher of the continental tradition, best known for his 1960 '' magnum opus'', '' Truth and Method'' (''Wahrheit und Methode''), on hermeneutics.
Life
Family a ...
, and finally the great twentieth century Romance philologists
Erich Auerbach
Erich Auerbach (November 9, 1892 – October 13, 1957) was a German philologist and comparative scholar and critic of literature. His best-known work is '' Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature'', a history of repres ...
,
Leo Spitzer
Leo Spitzer (; 7 February 1887 – 16 September 1960) was an Austrian Romanist and Hispanist, philologist, and an influential and prolific literary critic. He was known for his emphasis on stylistics. Along with Erich Auerbach, Spitzer is widely ...
, and
Ernst Robert Curtius
Ernst Robert Curtius (; 14 April 1886 – 19 April 1956) was a German literary scholar, philologist, and Romance language literary critic, best known for his 1948 study ''Europäische Literatur und Lateinisches Mittelalter'', translated in Eng ...
."
As a humanist and early philologist, Vico represented "a different, alternative model that has been extremely important to me in my work", which differed from mainstream Western prejudice against the Orient and the dominating "standardization" that came with modernity and culminated in
National Socialism
Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Naz ...
.
That the interdependence of human history and culture facilitates the scholars' task to "take seriously Vico's great observation that men make their own history, that what they can know is what they have made, and extend it to geography. As geographical and cultural entities—to say nothing of historical entities—such locales, regions, and geographical sectors as 'Orient' and 'Occident' are man-made."
Works
* ''Opere di G. B. Vico''. Fausto Nicolini (ed.), Bari: Laterza, 1911–41.
* ''De Antiquissima Italorum Sapientia ex Linguae Originibus Eruenda Libri Tres'' (On the Most Ancient Wisdom of the Italians Unearthed from the Origins of the Latin Language). 1710, Palmer, L. M., trans. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1988.
* ''Institutiones Oratoriae'' (The Art of Rhetoric). 1711–1741, Pinton, Girogio, and Arthur W. Shippee, trans. Amsterdam: Editions Rodopi B.V., 1984.* "On Humanistic Education", trans. Giorgio A. Pinton and Arthur W. Shippee. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1993.
* ''On the Study Methods of Our Time'', trans. Elio Gianturco. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1990.
* ''Universal right'' (Diritto universale). Translated from Latin and Edited by Giorgio Pinton and Margaret Diehl. Amsterdam/New York, Rodopi, 2000
* ''On the Most Ancient Wisdom of the Italians: Unearthed from the Origins of the Latin Language'', trans. L. M. Palmer. Ithaca, Cornell UP, 1988.
* ''Scienza Nuova'' (The First New Science). 1725, Pompa, Leon, trans. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2002.
* ''The New Science of Giambattista Vico'', (1744). trans.
Thomas G. Bergin and Max H. Fisch. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2nd ed. 1968.
See also
*
New Vico Studies (Institute for Vico Studies at
Emory University
Emory University is a private research university in Atlanta, Georgia. Founded in 1836 as "Emory College" by the Methodist Episcopal Church and named in honor of Methodist bishop John Emory, Emory is the second-oldest private institution of ...
)
*
Recapitulation theory
The theory of recapitulation, also called the biogenetic law or embryological parallelism—often expressed using Ernst Haeckel's phrase "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny"—is a historical hypothesis that the development of the embryo of an a ...
*''
Finnegans Wake
''Finnegans Wake'' is a novel by Irish writer James Joyce. It is well known for its experimental style and reputation as one of the most difficult works of fiction in the Western canon. It has been called "a work of fiction which combines a bod ...
''
Notes
References
*
*Fabiani, Paolo
"The Philosophy of the Imagination in Vico and Malebranche". F.U.P. (Florence UP), Italian edition 2002, English edition 2009.*Goetsch, James. ''Vico’s Axioms: The Geometry of the Human World.''. New Haven: Yale UP, 1995.
*Mooney, Michael. ''Vico in the Tradition of Rhetoric''. New Jersey: Princeton UP, 1985.
*Pompa, Leon. ''Vico: A Study of the New Science''. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1990.
*
Further reading
*Andreacchio, Marco.
Epistemology's Political-Theological Import in Giambattista Vico in ''Telos''. Vol. 185 (2019); pp. 105–27.
*Bedani, Gino. ''Vico Revisited: Orthodoxy, Naturalism and Science in the Scienza Nuova''. Oxford: Berg Publishers, 1989.
*
Berlin, Isaiah. ''Vico and Herder. Two Studies in the History of Ideas''. London, 1976.
*Berlin, Isaiah. ''
Three Critics of the Enlightenment: Vico, Hamann, Herder''. London and Princeton, 2000.
*Bizzell, Patricia, and Bruce Herzberg. ''The Rhetorical Tradition: Readings from Classical Times to the Present''. 2nd ed. Basingstoke: Macmillan; Boston, Ma: Bedford Books of St Martin's Press, 2001. Pp. Xv, 1673. (First Ed. 1990). 2001.
*Colilli, Paul. ''Vico and the Archives of Hermetic Reason''. Welland, Ont.: Editions Soleil, 2004.
*Croce, Benedetto. ''The Philosophy of Giambattista Vico.'' Trans. R.G. Collingwood. London: Howard Latimer, 1913.
*Danesi, Marcel. ''Vico, Metaphor, and the Origin of Language''. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1993
Fabiani, Paolo, "The Philosophy of the Imagination in Vico and Malebranche". F.U.P. (Florence UP), Italian edition 2002, English edition 2009.*Fisch, Max, and
Thomas G. Bergin, trans. ''Vita di Giambattista Vico'' (The Autobiography of Giambattista Vico). 1735–41. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1963.
*Giannantonio, Valeria. ''Oltre Vico – L'identità del passato a Napoli e Milano tra '700 e '800'', Carabba Editore, Lanciano, 2009.
* Gould, Rebecca Ruth.
Democracy and the Vernacular Imagination in Vico’s Plebian Philology” History of Humanities 3.2 (2018): 247–277.
* Grassi, Ernesto. ''Vico and Humanism: Essays on Vico, Heidegger, and Rhetoric.'' New York: Peter Lang, 1990.
*Hösle, Vittorio. "Vico und die Idee der Kulturwissenschaft" in ''Prinzipien einer neuen Wissenschaft über die gemeinsame Natur der Völker'', Ed. V. Hösle and C. Jermann, Hamburg : F. Meiner, 1990, pp. XXXI-CCXCIII
*Levine, Joseph. ''Giambattista Vico and the Quarrel between the Ancients and the Moderns.'' ''Journal of the History of Ideas'' 52.1(1991): 55-79.
*Lilla, Mark. ''G. B. Vico: The Making of an Anti-Modern.'' Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993.
*Mazzotta, Giuseppe. ''The New Map of the World: The Poetic Philosophy of Giambattista Vico.'' Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999.
*Miner, Robert. ''Vico, Genealogist of Modernity.'' Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2002.
*Schaeffer, John. ''Sensus Communis: Vico, Rhetoric, and the Limits of Relativism''. Durham: Duke UP, 1990.
*Verene, Donald. ''Vico's Science of Imagination''. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1981.
*Verene, Molly Black "Vico: A Bibliography of Works in English from 1884 to 1994." Philosophy Documentation Center, 1994.
* Alain Pons, ''Vie et mort des Nations. Lecture de la Science nouvelle de Giambattista Vico'', L'Esprit de la Cité, Gallimard, 2015
External links
*
*
Institute for Vico StudiesEntry in the Internet Encyclopedia of PhilosophyEntry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
*Verene, Donald Phillip. , archived from Johns Hopkins University Press.
Vico's Poetic Philosophy within Europe's Cultural Identity, Emanuel L. Paparella*Leon Pompa
Vico's Theory of the Causes of Historical Change archived at The Institute for Cultural Research
Portale Vico - Vico PortalText of the New Science in multiple formatsEssays on Vico's creative influence on James Joyce's ''Finnegans Wake''Samuel Beckett's essay on Vico and Joyce*
ttp://lucianofsamosata.info/wiki/doku.php?id=2012:vico-historical-mythology Vico's Historical Mythology*
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