an in his ignorance makes himself the ruler of the Universe, for in the
examples cited /[i.e. those related to the origin of language and metaphor]/ he
has made of himself an entire world. So that, as rational metaphysics teaches
that man becomes all things by understanding them /homo intelligendo fit
omnia/ this imaginative metaphysics shows /dimostra/ that man becomes all
things by not understanding them /homo non intelligendo fit omnia/ and perhaps
the latter proposition is truer than the former, for when man understands, he
extends /spiega/ his mind and takes in /comprende/ the things, but when he does
not understand, he makes the things out of himself and becomes them by
transforming himself into them.
[(Sc. N. par. 405)]
If this is really so and the possibilities of error become less and less frequent as we
advance towards those stages of humanity which are supposed to resemble ours, then a
good case could be made for arguing that Vico had in fact adumbrated the concept of
Verstehen, that is to say, of cognitive empathy or imaginative understanding which man
can use solely when handling the things that belong to man: motivations, fears, feelings
and so forth. This is a mode of knowing (sometimes understood as a method of sorts)
proper to the human sciences or Geisteswissenschaften, a mode or perhaps a method that
by definition natural sciences lack.29 This interpretation is suggested by, amongst others,
Isaiah Berlin in his essays on Vico and the Scienza Nuova. According to Berlin, Vico
discovered a hitherto ‘unrecognized sense of knowing basic to all humane studies’. In his
own words, this sense of knowing is no other but the sense
in which I know what it is to be poor, to fight for a cause, to belong to a nation,
to join or abandon a church or a party, to feel nostalgia, terror, the presence of a
God, to understand a gesture, a work of art, a joke, a man’s character or that one
is transformed or lying to oneself.
One has to note, however, that in the above examples no time or place provision is made,
so that it would appear that the experience of being poor—to quote one of his
illustrations—is fundamentally the same in twentieth-century Britain and in tenth-century
China: But it is highly unlikely that the notion of ‘poverty’ has remained unaltered
throughout history and geography. Be that as it may, such things are known, Berlin
continues,
in the first place…by personal experience, in the second place because the
experience of others is sufficiently woven into our own to be seized quasidirectly…
and in the third place by the working (sometimes by a conscious
effort) of the imagination. This is the sort of knowing that participants of an
activity claim to possess as against mere observers; the knowledge of the actors
as against that of the audience, of the ‘inside’ story as against that obtained from
some ‘outside’ vantage point: knowledge by ‘direct acquaintance’ with my inner
states or by sympathetic insight into those of others.30
Berlin’s suggestion and description is indeed valid for much of Dilthey’s, Weber’s or
Collingwood’s theorization of the method and aim proper to the human sciences or to
history. In the initial mist to which Vico’s efforts belong, however, that characterization
turns out to be far too clear, though undoubtedly Berlin is looking in the right direction.
There is something else, in fact, that would make possible the operations of Verstehen in
Vico’s Scienza Nuova. Let us see how it might work.
The other key idea which Vico resorts to when attempting to guarantee the exactness of
our re-entering into other men’s minds or when trying to engage cognitively with the
most remote past is the notion of Providence. This, as shall be shown, semi-secular idea
would guide the course of nations according to specifical, intellectually graspable
patterns (Vico’s corsi and ricorsi), constituting the so-called storia ideale eterna of that
which ‘was, is, and shall be’. Needless to add, in Vico’s speculation the ‘motions of the
human mind’ are to follow suit, over and above the personal will of the historical actors
themselves. Now, this notion, no less than the verum factum topos, enjoys a reputable
pedigree from the prophet Isaiah 10:5–8, to Maimonides’s ‘cunning of God’,
Mandeville’s ‘private vices, public benefits’, Kant’s ‘hidden plan of
Nature’ (verborgener Plan der Natur) and, of course, Hegel’s ‘cunning of Reason’ (List
der Vernunft)—the last ones being wholly secular ways of translating an old
theologoumenon. Amos Funkenstein has identified and richly documented this family of
ideas. He has dubbed it ‘the invisible hand explanations’ in history, alluding to Adam
Smith’s celebrated simile in economics.31 Now, Vico is quite amenable to this
description in his explanation of history and of the manner man is capable of grasping it
in the Scienza Nuova. Thus, while describing at length the slow process by which man
has forged his own civil nature out of an initial brutish existence, Vico rejects all forms of
diffusionism in the spreading of civilization and insists on a spontaneous process taking
place in each nation and place. Yet, he emphasizes again and again that mankind is
willing one thing and invariably achieving another, and that the oblique route that the
nations follow (their corso and ricorso) is, as it were, guaranteed in its intelligible
uniformity by a non-conscious effort of the historical subjects:
For, though men have themselves made this world of nations… it has without
doubt been born of a mind often unlike /diversa/, at times quite contrary to /tutta
contraria/ and always superior to, the particular ends these men had set
themselves…. Thus men would indulge their bestial lust and forsake their
children, but they create the purity of marriage, whence arise the families; the
fathers would exercise their paternal powers over the clients without
moderation, but they subject them to civil power, whence arise the cities; the
reigning orders of nobles would abuse their seigneural freedom over the
plebeians, but they fall under the servitude of laws which create popular liberty;
the free people would break loose from the restraint of their laws, but they fall
subject to monarchs…. By their always acting thus, the same things come to
be.32
Yet, this Providence is hardly a religious, not to say a Catholic, concept, for it is in-built
in the very process of humanization (the birth of nations) and does not leave any room for
any form of transcendence. Mankind would behave in that way with or without the
supervision of an all-powerful Deity and, for this reason, Vico’s Providence is, so to
speak, a Providence without a God.
In the end, the five books and the 1,112 paragraphs of the final version of the Scienza
Nuova of 1744 may seem to prove unequal to the gigantic task Vico had glimpsed
himself accomplishing. For one thing, it was necessary to command far more philological
and anthropological scholarship, and especially to be in possession of a more worked-out
methodological thought as regards its organization and presentation.33 Nevertheless,
truncated as it now appears, Vico’s accomplishment in the Scienza Nuova is admirable in
terms of its originality in the role that he (perhaps unwittingly) attributed to the nonrational
in man’s protracted search for his own social being: the inquiry into ‘truth’ in its
historical dimension, into the creation of the city and of civilized existence, and into the
capacity we possess—or we lack—of grasping other men’s expectations and fears. In a
word, Vico was trying to formulate the credentials we can legitimately attribute to
historical knowledge of any sort. If neither the verum factum canon nor the labyrinthine
expositions of the Scienza Nuova appear to us wholly satisfactory, we should perhaps
remember that the theory of truth, like the Greek Argos of old, has a hundred eyes. The
merit of having spotted several of them, and not the feeblest ones, is the indisputable
basis of Vico’s intellectual achievement.
NOTES
1 Cf. Jules Chaix-Ruy, ‘La fortune de G.B.Vico’, in [13.16], 124–52. The myth of Vico’s
isolation in Naples has been exposed, among others, by Nicola Badaloni in his two books,
[13.26] and [13.27] and in his article ‘Vico nell’ ambito della filosofia europea’, [13.12],
233–66. Badaloni stresses Vico’s links with the Accademia degli Investiganti and other local
circles of the Neapolitan Enlightenment. Cf. also G.Bedani, Vico Revisited. Orthodoxy,
Naturalism and Science in the Scienza Nuova, Oxford, 1989, pp. 7–32, and A.Battistini,
‘Momenti e tendenze degli studi vichiani dal 1978 al 1985’, Giambattista Vico. Poesia,
Logica, Religione, ed. G.Santinelli, Brescia, Morcelliana, 1986, pp. 27–102.
2 [13.47], ‘Conclusione’, 219–26: ‘egli fu né più né meno che il secolo decimonono in
germe’ (p.226).
3 B.Spaventa, La filosofia italiana nelle sue relazioni con la filosofia europea, Bari, Berg,
1908, pp. 31,60.
4 Cf. E.Leach, ‘Vico and the Future of Anthropology’, [13.20], 149–59; J.H. White,
‘Developmental Psychology and Vico’s Concept of Universal History’, [13.20], 1–3; Silvano
Arietti, ‘Vico and Modern Psychiatry’, [13.20], 81–94 (on Vico and Freud).
5 Cf. [13.77], esp. 24–89, and 105–15; Gustavo Costa, ‘Vico and Ancient Rhetoric’, Classical
Influences on Western Thought, ed. R.R.Bolgar, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press,
1979, pp. 247–62; E.Grassi, ‘Critical Philosophy or Topical Philosophy? Meditations on the
De Nostri Temporis Studiorum Ratione’, [13.18], 39–50 (Italian version in [13.3], 108–21).
6 [13.3], 68–9 (my trans.). Cf. [13.22], 31–45. This is the first recorded formulation of the
verum factum principle.
7 On the young Vico’s scientific background, cf. P.Rossi’s historical account, ‘Ancora sui
contemporanei di Vico’, Rivista di filosofia 76(1985): 465–74; M. Torrini, ‘Il problema del
rapporto tra scienza e filosofia nel pensiero del primo Vico’, Physis 20(1978): 103–21.
J.Barnouw has reviewed the different trends of research in [13.29], 609–20. Barnouw’s thesis
does not refer specifically to the De Antiquissima Italorum Sapientia, but the author
maintains that ‘Vico’s development…supports the view that the new sciences of the 17th
century, from Galileo on, provided the crucial inspiration and model for the formation of the
human sciences’ (p.609). This is more or less the route Comte took, but it hardly squares with
the methods of Vico in the Scienza Nuova, despite his own claim that he is applying Bacon’s
method (par. 163; cf. also 137, 359). Cf. n. 33 below.
8 Cf. Richard Popkin, A History of Scepticism from Erasmus to Spinoza, rev. edn. London,
University of California Press, 1979, Preface, p. xvii.
9 De Antiqmssima Italorum Sapientia was also called liber prias metaphysicus; in Vico’s
original project, a liber secundus physicus and a liber tertius moralis were to follow. Some
notes prepared for the second book were published fifty years after Vico’s death, assembled
as a monograph entitled De Aequilibrio Corporis Animantis, a book now lost. Vico appears
to have begun working on the Scienza Nuova fairly soon after the publication of the De
Antiqmssima. Cf. [13.8], Introduction.
10 Vico stresses that the cogito is a sign, but not a cause of my being. Vico uses here the Greek
term tekmērion, a word of Stoic echoes. This is Vico’s sceptic reply to Descartes:
The dogmatist…would allow that the sceptic acquires knowledge of his being from
awareness of his thinking, since the unshakable certainty of existence is born from
his awareness of thinking. And, of course, no one can be wholly certain that he
exists unless he makes up his own being out of something he cannot doubt.
Consequently, the sceptic cannot be certain that he is because he does not gather his
existence from a wholly undoubted principle. To all this the sceptic will respond by
denying that knowledge of being is acquired from consciousness of thinking. For,
he argues, to know (scire) is to be cognizant (nosse) of the causes out of which a
thing is born. But I who think am mind and body, and if thought were the cause of
my being, thought would be the cause of the body. Yet there are bodies that do not
think. Rather, it is because I consist of body and mind that I think; so that body and
mind united are the cause of thought. For if I were only body I would not think. If I
were only mind, I would have /pure/ intelligence. In fact, thinking is the sign and
not the cause of my being mind. But the sure sign (techmerium) is not the cause, for
the clever sceptic will not deny that certainity of sure /rational/ signs, but just the
certainty of causes.
([13–8], 55–6; [13–6], 72–5)
11 [13.8], 57; De Antiquissima, I, iv [13.6], 741. This subchapter is entitled ‘God is the
comprehension of all causes—Divine Knowledge is the norm of human knowledge’.
12 [13.3], 63–4; [13.8], 4 5f. (italics added). Cf. also the following: ‘Amongst human sciences
only those are true which…have elements which we coordinate and are contained within
ourselves…and when we put together such elements, we are becoming authors of such
truths /et cum ea componimus, vera quae… cognoscimus, faciamus/ [13.3], 62f, 68f, 73f.
13 [13.3], 149; [13.8], 157. In [13.3], 155 Vico recognizes that the value of every thing he is
proposing does not stem from ‘the force and evidence of the reasons advanced’, for in lexical
questions usage and authority overshadow the innermost meanings of speech.
14 [13.8], 167; [13.3], 156.
15 [13.48], 233–59. Cf. also G.Gentile, Studi vichiani: Lo svolgimento della filosofia vichiana
(1912–15), Opère Complete, vol. xvi, Florence, Sansoni, 19633.
16 Amos Funkenstein, Theology and the Scientific Imagination from the Middle Ages to the
Seventeenth Century, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1986, 290–345; esp. 296–9;
R.Mondolfo, Il verum factum prima di Vico, Bari, Guida, 1969, and the criticisms levelled
against this book by Maria Donzelli, ‘Studi vichiani e storia delle idee. (A proposito di un
saggio di Rodolfo Mondolfo)’, Filosofia 21(1970): 33–48; and A.Pérez-Ramos, Francis
Bacon’s Idea of Science and the Maker’s Knowledge Tradition, Oxford, Clarendon, 1988, pp.
48–62, 167–96.
17 In Aristotle’s Politica 1282a17ff. we read:
About some things the man who made them would not be the only nor the best
judge, as in the case of professionals whose products come within the knowledge of
lay men also (hoi mē echontes tēn technfin): to judge a house, for instance, does not
belong only to the man who built it, but in fact the man who uses the house (the
householder) will be an even better judge of it, and a steerman judges a rudder
better than a carpenter, and the diner judges a banquet better than the cook.
[(Loeb edn, trans. H.Rachman, 227)]
Plato resorted to the same sort of confutation in several places (Euthydemus 289A-D,
Cratylns 390 B, Meno 88 E), and especially in Republic 601 E-602 A:
The user of anything is the one who knows most of it by experience, and he reports
to the maker the good and bad effects in the use of the thing he uses. As, for
example, the flute-player reports to the flute-maker which flutes respond and serve
rightly in flute-playing, and will order the kind that must be made and the other will
obey him…. The one, then, possessing knowledge (epistēmēn) reports about the
goodness or badness of the flutes, and the other, believing, will make them…. Then,
in respect to the same implement, the maker will have right belief (pistin orthēn)
about its excellent and defects from association with the man who knows,…but the
user will have true knowledge.
[(Loeb edn, trans. P.Shorey, 445–7)]
It is tempting to perceive in these statements a dim reflection of social conditions amongst the
Greeks.
18 Cf. Philo of Alexandria (floruit c. AD 40), Quod Deus Immutabilis sit, in Complete Works I,
22–3, (Loeb edn, trans. F.H.Colson and G.H.Whittaker, repr. 1960); cf. also De Opificio
Mundi I, 20–1. For a treatment of this topic by mediaeval Jewish and Christian philosophers,
in the context of God’s self-knowledge qua Creator, cf. A.Funkenstein, Theology and the
Scientific Imagination, p. 291f. For mathematics, cf. Proclus’ Commentary on the First Book
of Euclid’s Elements, ed. and trans. P.R.Morrow, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press,
1970, Prologue 11–12 and 64. The soul is equipped with mathematical patterns
(paradeigmata) which it brings forth as projections (probolai) of its own making. Proclus’
Platonism is fairly similar to Vico’s in that both purport to find the seeds of truth hidden in
man’s creative mind.
19 Cf. [13.24], 321ff., Hans Blumenberg, ‘“Nachahmung der Natur”: zur Vorgeschichte des
schöpferischen Menschen’, Studium Generale 10 (1957): 266–83), and Cusanus und
Nolanus, Frankfurt-on-the-Main, Suhrkamp, 1973.
20 Cf. Vinzenz Rüfner, ‘Homo secundus Deus. Eine gestesgeschichtliche Studie zum
menschlichen Schöpfertum’, Philosophisches Jahrbuch 63(1955): 248–91; A. Funkenstein,
Theology and the Scientific Imagination, pp. 290–345; Jürgen Klüver, Operationismus. Kritik
und Geschichte einer Philosophie der exakten Wissenscbaften, Stuttgart, Frommann-
Holzboog 1971, pp. 38–52; and A.Perez-Ramos, Francis Bacon’s Idea of Science, pp. 135–
98.
21 Joseph Glanvill, Plus Ultra, or the Progress and Advancement of Learning, London, 1668, p.
35.
22 Religio Medici I, 13 (1642/43, written in the mid-1630s), ed. with Introduction and notes by
C.A.Patrides (Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1977, repr. 1984), p. 74.
23 ‘Six Lessons to the Savillian Professors of Mathematics’, English Works, ed. W. Molesworth,
London, 1838–45, VI, pp. 183–4; repr. Scientia Verlag, Aalen 1961–6. Cf. Arthur Child,
Making and Knowing in Hobbes, Vico and Dewey, Los Angeles, University of California
Press, 1953, pp. 271–83, and W.Sacksteder, ‘Hobbes: the Art of the Geometricians’, Journal
of the History of Ideas 18(1980): 131–46, and his ‘Hobbes: Geometrical Objects’, Philosophy
of Science 48(1981): 573–90. Mathematics was not, however, the sole direction in which
Hobbes developed his constructivist stance. As with the later Vico, there is a second
interpretation of this topos, once it is realized that the State, no less than mathematicals, is a
man-made product:
To men is granted knowledge only of those things whose generation depends upon
their own judgement. Hence the theories concerning quantity, knowledge of which
is called geometry, are demonstrable. There is a geometry and it is demonstrable
because we ourselves make the figures. In addition, politics and ethics, namely,
knowledge of the just and the unjust, of the equitable and the unequitable, can be
demonstrated a priori: in fact its principles, the conception of the just and the
equitable and their opposites, are known to us because we ourselves create the
causes of justice, that is, laws and conventions.
De Homine II, 10, Opera Philosophica quae latine scripsit (same edn) II,
pp. 92–4; cf. also De Cive XVII and De Corpore XXV
24 [13.3], 68–9; [13.8], 52. Vico, however, tries to provide a rationale for successful explanation
in physics:
Those theories /ea meditata/ are approved in physics which have some similarity
with what we do /simile quid operemus/. For this reason, hypotheses about the
natural order are considered most illuminating and are accepted with the fullest
consent of everyone, if we can base experiments on them, in which we make
something similar to Nature.
(ibid.)
25 Cf. D.P.Lachterman, The Ethics of Geometry. A Genealogy of Modernity, London,
Routledge, 1989, pp. 1–24. For other expositions of the verum factum topos, cf.
W.Vossenkuhl, Wahrheit des Handels. Untersuchungen zum Verhältnis von Wahrheit und
Handeln, Bonn, Bouvier, 1974, pp. 1–43; Stephen Otto, ‘Vico als Transzendentalphilosoph’,
Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 62(1980): 67–80, and ‘Interprétation transcendentale
de Paxiome “verum et factum convertuntur” ’, Archives de Philosophie 40(1977): 13–39.
Against this interpretation, cf. F.Fellmann, ‘1st Vicos “Neue Wissenschaft”
Transzendentalphilosophie?’, Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 61(1979): 68–76. Many
points of this debate are summarized in J.C.Morrison, ‘Three Interpretations of Vico’,
Journal of the History of Ideas 39 (1978): 511–18.
26 The Scienza Nuova is a rather ambitious work. It purports to contain: (a) a ‘civil and rational
theory of Providence’, i.e. a demonstration of the way Providence supposedly acts in social
life; (2) a ‘philosophy of authority’, or on the origins of property (auctores); (3) a ‘history of
human ideas’, especially the oldest ones in the religious field; (4) a ‘philosophical critique’ of
the most remote religious traditions; (5) an ‘eternal ideal history’, showing the alwaysrepeated
route the nations run; (6) a ‘system of natural law of the nations’, based on primitive
necessity and usefulness; and (7) a science of the oldest and darkest beginnings or principles
of ‘universal human history’, where Vico tries to interpret the hidden truth of mythological
fables. All in all, Vico aims at what we might call an exploration of the ‘savage mind’ in the
age of gods and heroes. In this sense the Scienza Nuova purports to advance a rational theory
of the mondo civile. Cf. K.Löwith, Meaning in History, Chicago, University of Chicago
Press, 1949, ch. vi.
27 Par. 331. [13.3], 461; [13.5], 96. Vico, however, does not forget the theological sanction of
the verum factum topos in par. 349:
For the first indubitable principle posited above /par. 331/ is that this world of
nations has certainly been made by men, and its guise /la guisa/ must therefore be
found within the modifications of our own human mind /le modificazioni della
nostra mente umana/. And history cannot be more certain than when he who creates
the things also narrates them. Now, as geometry, when it constructs the world of
quantity out of its elements, or contemplates that world, is creating it of itself, just
so does our science/ create for itself/ the world of nations/, but with a reality greater
by just so much as the institutions having to do with human affairs /gli ordini
d’intorno alle faccende degli uomini/ are more real than points, lines, surfaces and
figures are. And this very fact is an argument, O reader, that these proofs are of a
kind divine and should give thee a divine pleasure, since in God knowledge and
creation are one and the same thing.
Cf. [13.3], 467; [13.5], 104f.
28 ‘Vico and Marx: Notes on a Precursory Reading’, [13.21], 38–61, esp. 51.
29 Cf. Karl-Otto Apel, Die Erklären-Verstehen Kontroverse in transzendeltalpragmatischer
Sicht, Frankfurt-on-the-Main, Suhrkamp, 1979; J.R.Martin, ‘Another Look at the Doctrine of
Verstehen’, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 20 (1969): 53–67; W.Bourgedis,
‘Verstehen in the Social Sciences’, Zeitschrift für allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 7
(1976):26–38.
30 I.Berlin, ‘Vico’s Concept of Knowledge’, in [13.18], 375f. For a criticism of Berlin’s views
cf. [13.84], 159ff.
31 A.Funkenstein, Theology and the Scientific Imagination, pp. 202–89, esp. pp. 279–89. Vico’s
secularized Providence and the autonomy he attributes to the course of human history bears a
strong resemblance with some of Spinoza’s doctrines, despite Vico’s claims about man’s free
will. Cf. A.Pons, ‘L’ idee de développement chez Vico’, in Entre Forme et Histoire, ed.
O.Bloch, B.Balan and P.Carrive, Paris, Meridiens Klincksieck, 1988, pp. 181–94; [13.77],
49–68; J.Samuel Preus, ‘Spinoza, Vico and the Imagination of Religion’, Journal of the
History of Ideas 49 (1988): 71–93.
32 Sc. N. par. 1108; [13.5], pp. 700f. Cf. also par. 341:
But men, because of their corrupted nature, are under the tyranny of self-love,
which compels them to make private utility their chief guide. Seeking everything
useful for themselves and nothing for their companions, they cannot bring their
passion under control /porre in conato/ to direct them towards justice. We thereby
establish that man in the bestial state desires only his own welfare /la sua salvezza/;
having taken wife and begotten children, he desires his own welfare along with that
of the nation; when the nations are united by wars, treaties of peace, alliances, and
commerce, he desires his own welfare along with that of his family; having entered
upon civil life, he desires his own welfare along with that of his city; when its rule
is extended over several peoples, he desires his own welfare along with that of the
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works in Italian and English
13.1 Opere di Giambattista Vico, ed. with textual and historical notes by Fausto Nicolini,
in collaboration with Giovanni Gentile (vol. i) and Benedetto Croce (vol. v), 8 vols,
Bari, Laterza, 1911–41.
13.2 Opere di Giambattista Vico, ed. with an Introduction and notes by F.Nicolini, Milan
and Naples, Ricciardi, 1953.
13.3 Opere Filosofiche, texts, translations and notes by Paolo Cristofolini, with an
Introduction by Nicola Badaloni, Florence, Sansoni, 1971.
13.4 Opere Giuridiche, ed. Paolo Cristofolini with an Introduction by Nicola Badaloni,
Florence, Sansoni, 1974.
13.5 The New Science of Giambattista Vico, trans. with an Introduction by T.G. Berlin
and M.H.Fisch, Ithaca and London, Cornell University Press, 1948, repr. 1988.
13.6 The Autobiography of Giambattista Vico, trans. T.G.Bergin and M.H. Fisch, Ithaca
and London, Cornell University Press, 1944, repr. 1975.
13.7 On the Study Methods of Our Time, trans. with an Introduction and notes by Elio
Gianturco, Indianapolis, Bobbs-Merrill, 1965.
13.8 On the Most Ancient Wisdom of the Italians, Unearthed from the Origins of the
Latin Language, Including the Disputation with the Giornale de’ Letterati d’Italia,
trans. with an Introduction and notes by L.M.Palmer, Ithaca and London, Cornell
University Press, 1988.
13.9 Vico: Selected Writings, ed. and trans. L.Pompa, Cambridge, Cambridge University
Press, 1982.
whole human race. In all these circumstances man desires principally his own
utility. Therefore, it is only by divine providence that he can be held within these
institutions /dentro tali ordini/ to practice justice as a member of the society of the
family, the city, and finally of mankind. Unable to attain all the utilities he wishes,
he is constrained by these institutions to seek those which are his due: and this is
called just. That which regulates all human justice is therefore divine justice, which
is administered /ministrata/ by divine providence to preserve human society.
(Scienza Nuova, par. 341, [13.5], pp. 101f.)
Because of that, Vico adds in the next paragraph (342) that his science must be a rational civil
theology of divine providence (cf. also par. 385). On this question, see S.R.Luft, ‘A Genetic
Interpretation of Divine Providence in Vico’s New Science’, Journal of the History of
Philosophy 30 (1982): 151–69. On the method of the Scienza Nuova Vico is impenetrably
opaque. He claims (n. 7 above) that he is deploying Bacon’s method in human affairs (par.
163), but Vico mentions the somewhat atypical Cogitata et Visa insted of, as expected, the
Novum Organum. E.McMullin has studied this question in ‘Vico’s Theory of Science’, in
[13.20], 60–89. He terms Vico’s method ‘hypothetico-suggestive’ (p. 83).
Bibliographies and Journals
13.10 Croce, B. Bihliografia vichiana, with additions by F.Nicolini, 2 vols, Naples,
Ricciardi 1947–8.
13.11 Donzelli, M. Contributo alla bibliografia vichiana (1948–1970), Naples, Guida,
1973.
13.12 Tagiacozzo, G., Verene, D.P. and Rumble, V. A Bibliography of Vico in English,
1884–1984, Philosophy Documentation Center, Ohio, Bowling Green State University,
1986.
13.13 Bolletino del Centro di Studi Vichiani, Naples, 1971–.
13.14 New Vico Studies, New Jersey, Humanities Press, 1983–.
13.15 Studi Vichiani, Naples, Guida, 1969–.
Collective Works of Criticism
13.16 Campanella e Vico, Publications of the Archivio di filosofia, Padua, CED AM,
1969.
13.17 Omaggio a Vico, Naples, Morano, 1968.
13.18 Giambattista Vico: An International Symposium, ed. G.Tagliacozzo andH.
V.White, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1969.
13.19 Giambattista Vico’s Science of Humanity, ed. G.Tagliacozzo and D.Verene,
Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976.
13.20 Vico and Contemporary Thought, ed. G.Tagliacozzo, M.Mooney and D.P. Verene,
New Jersey, Humanities Press, 1979, 2 vols; two vols in one, 1981.
13.21 Vico and Marx: Affinities and Contrasts, ed. G.Tagliacozzo and D.P.Verene, New
Jersey, Humanities Press, 1983.
Books and Articles
(Those articles to be found in Collective Works of Criticism (above) are excluded.):
13.22 Amerio, F. Introduzione allö studio di Giambattista Vico, Turin, Società Editrice
Internazionale, 1947.
13.23——‘Vico e il barocco’, Giornale di metafisica 3(1948): 157–63.
13.24 Apel, K.O. Die Idee der Sprache in der Tradition des Humanismus von Dante bis
Vico, Bonn, Bouvier Verlag, 1980 (3rd edn).
13.25 Auerbach, E. ‘Sprachliche Beiträge zur Erklärung der der Scienza Nuova von
Giambattista Vico’, Archivum Romanicum 21(1937): 173–84.
13.26 Badaloni, N. Introduzione a Giambattista Vico. Milan, Feltrinelli, 1961.
13.27——Introduzione a Vico, Roma-Bari, Laterza, 1984.
13.28 Barnouw, J. The Relation between the Certain and the True in Vico’s Pragmatist
Construction of Human History’, Comparative Literature Studies 15(1978):242–62.
13.29——‘Vico and the Continuity of Science: the Relation of his Epistemology to
Bacon and Hobbes’, Isis 71(1980): 609–20.
13.30 Battistini, A. ‘Vico e l’etimologia mitopoietica’, Lingua e Stile 9 (1974): 31–66.
13.31 Bellofiore, L. La dottrina de I la Provvidenza in Vico, Padua, CEDAM, 1962.
13.32 Berlin, I. Vico and Herder: Two Studies in the History of Ideas, New York, Viking
Press, 1976.
13.33 Burke, P. Vico, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1985.
13.34 Cantelli, G. Mente, corpo, linguaggio. Saggio sull interpretazione vichiana del
mito, Firenze, Sansoni, 1986.
13.35 Caponigri, A. Time and Idea. The Theory of History in Giambattista Vico, London,
Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1953.
13.36——‘Vico and the Theory of History’, Giornale di Metafisica 9(1954): 183–97.
13.37 Chaix-Ruy, J. La Formation de la pensee philosophique de Giambattista Vico,
Gap, L.Jean, 1943.
Giambattsita Vico et Villuminisme athée, Paris, Del Duca, 1968.
13.38 Child, A. Making and Knowing in Hobbes, Vico and Dewey, Berkeley, University
of California Press, 1953.
13.39 Ciardo, M. Le quattro epoche dello storicismo: Vico, Kant, Hegel, Croce, Bari,
Laterza, 1947.
13.40 Corsano, A. Giambattista Vico, Bari, Laterza, 1956.
13.41——Il pensiero religioso italiano dall’umanesimo al giurisdizionalismo, Bari,
Laterza, 1937.
13.42——Umanesimo e religione in Giambattista Vico, Bari, Laterza, 1953.
13.43 Costa, G. Le antichità germaniche nella cultura italiana da Machiavelli a Vico,
Naples, Bibliopolis, 1977.
13.44——‘Giambattista Vico e la “natura simpatetica” ’, Giornale critico della filosofia
italiana 47(1968):401–18.
13.45——La leggenda dei secoli d’oro nella letteratura italiana, Bari, Laterza, 1972.
13.46——‘Vico and Ancient Rhetoric’, Eighteenth Century Studies 11(1978): 247–62.
13.47 Croce, B. La filosofia di Giambattista Vico, Bari, Laterza, 1911; 6th edn 1962.
Trans. R.G.Collingwood as The Philosophy of G.B.Vico London, 1913; repr. New
York, Russell and Russell, 1964.
13.48——Te fonti della gnoseologia vichiana’, Studio sullo Hegel, Bari, Laterza, 1912,
1967, pp. 233–59.
13.49 De Mas, E. ‘Bacone e Vico’, Filosofia 10(1959): 505–59.
13.50——‘On the new Method of a New Science: A Study of Giambattista Vico’,
Journal of the History of Ideas 32(1971): 85–94.
13.51 De Santillana, G. ‘Vico and Descartes’, Osiris 21 (1950): 565–80.
13.52 Fassò, Guido, ‘Genesi storica e genesi logica delia filosofia delia Scienza Nuova’,
Rivista internazionale di filosofia del diritto 25(1948):319–36.
13.53 Fellmann, F. Das Vico-Axiom: Der Mensch macht die Geschichte, Freiburg und
Munich, Verlag Karl Alber, 1976.
13.54——‘Vicos Theorem der Gleichursprünglichkeit von Theorie und Praxis und die
dogmatische Denkform’, Philosophisches Jahrhuch 84(1978):259–73.
13.55 Flint, R. Vico, Edinburgh and London, W.Blackpool and Sons, 1884.
13.56 Focher, F. Vico e Hobbes, Naples, Giannini, 1977.
13.57 Fornaca, R. Ilpensiero educativo di Giambattista Vico, Turin, G.Giappichelli,
1957–
13.58 Fubini, M. Stile e umanità di Giambattista Vico, 2nd edn, Naples, Ricciardi, 1965.
13.59 Funkenstein, A. Theology and the Scientific Imagination from the Middle Ages to
the Seventeenth Century, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1986.
13.60 Garin, E. ‘Cartesio e l’Italia’, Giornale critico delta filosofia italiana, 4(1950):
385–405.
13.61——Storia della filosofia italiana, 3 vols, Turin, Einaudi, 1966.
13.62 Gaukroger, S. ‘Vico and the Maker’s Knowledge Principle’, History of Philosophy
Quarterly 3(1986): 29–44.
13.63 Gentile, G. Studi vichiani, 3rd enlarged edn as vol. xvi of the Opère, Florence,
Sansoni, 1968.
13.64 Grassi, E. Rhetoric as Philosophy, University Park, Pennsylvania State University
Press, 1980.
13.65 Haddock, B. ‘Vico’s Discovery of the True Homer: A Case Study in Historical
Reconstruction’, Journal of the History of Ideas 40(1979):583–602.
13.66——Vico’s Political Thought, Swansea, Mortlake Press, 1986.
13.67 Hess, M.B. ‘Vico’s Heroic Mataphor’, Metaphysics and Philosophy of Science in
the 17th and 18th Centuries. Essays in Honour ofGerd Buchdahl, ed. R.S. Woolhose,
Dordrecht, London and Boston, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1988.
13.68 Iannizzotto, M. L’empirismo nella gnoseologia di Giambattista Vico, Padua,
CEDAM, 1968.
13.69 Klemm, O. Giamhattista Vico als Geschichtsphilosoph und Völkerpsycholog,
Leipzig, Engelman, 1906.
13.70 Lilla, M.G. B.Vico, The Making of an Anti-Modern, Cambridge, MA and London,
Harvard University Press, 1931.
13.71 Löwith, K. Meaning in History: the Theological Implications of the Philosophy of
History, Chicago, Chicago University Press, 1949.
13.72——Vicos Grundsatz: Verum et factum convertuntur: seine theologische Prämisse
und deren säkularen Konsequenzen, Heidelberg, C. Winter, 1968.
13.73 Mali, J. The Rehabilitation of Myth: Vico’s New Science, Cambridge, Cambridge
University Press, 1992.
13.74 Manno, A.G. Lo storicismo di Giambattista Vico, Naples, Istituto editoriale del
Mezzogiorno , 1965.
13.75 Manson, R. The Theory of Knowledge of Giambattista Vico: On the Method of the
New Science concerning the Common Nature of the Nations, Hamden, Conn., Anchor
Books, 1969.
13.76 Meinecke, F. Die Entstehung des Historismus, 4th edn, Munich, Oldenbourg,
1959–
13.77 Mooney, M. Vico in the Tradition of Rhetoric, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University
Press, 1985.
13.78 Morrison, J.C. ‘Vico and Spinoza’, Journal of the History of Ideas 41(1980): 49–
68.
13.79——‘Vico’s Doctrine of the Natural Law of the Gentes’, Journal of the History of
Philosophy 16(1978):47–60.
13.80 Nicolini, F. Commento storico alla seconda Scienza Nuova, 2 vols, Rome, Storia e
letteratura 1949–50; repr. Rome, Storia e letteratura, 1978.
13.81——Saggi vichiani, Naples, Giannini, 1955.
13.82 O’Neill, J. ‘Vico on the Natural Workings of the Mind’, Phenomenology and the
Human Sciences, 117–25 (suppl. to Philosophical Topics 12, 1981.
13.83 Pérez-Ramos, A. ‘La emergencia del sujeto en las ciencias humanas’, La crisis de
la razon, M. Foucault et al., Murcia, Pub. Universidad de Murcia, 1986, pp. 163–202.
13.84 Pompa, L. Vico: A Study of the New Science, Cambridge, Cambridge University
Press, 1975; 2nd edn 1990.
13.85——Human Nature and Historical Knowledge: Hume, Hegel and Vico, Cambridge,
Cambridge University Press, 1990.
13.86 Rossi, P. Le sterminate antiquità: Studi vichiani, Pisa, Nistri-Lischi, 1969.
13.87——I segni del tempo. Storia della terra e storia delle nazioni da Hooke a Vico,
Milan, Feltrinelli, 1979.
13.88 Vasoli, C. ‘Topica, retorica e argomentazione nella prima filosofia di Vico’, Revue
Internationale de Philosophie 33(1979):188–201.
13.89 Verene, D.P. Vico’s Science of the Imagination, New York, Cornell University
Press, 1981.
13.90 Viechtbauer, H. Transzendentale Einsicht und Theorie der Geschichte:
Überlegungen zu G.V.Vicos “Liber Metaphysicus”, Munich, Fink, 1977.
13.91 Vossenkuhl, W. Wahrheit des Handels. Untersuchungen zum Verhältnis von
Wahrheit und Handeln, Bonn, Bouvier Verlag, 1974.
13.92 Werner, K. Giambattista Vico als Philosoph und gelehrter Forscher, 1879; repr.
New York, Burt Franklin, 1962.Routledge History of Philosophy. Taylor & Francis e-Library. 2005.