The Philosophy of Giambattista Vico

The earliest phase of Vico's theory of knowledge takes the form of a direct criticism of and antithesis to the Cartesianism which had guided European thought for more than half...

The will to believe, which in Vico's case was very strong, and the complete sway which the Catholicism of his country and age held over his mind, bound him firmly down to the Ch...

The lack of clearness on the relation of philosophy to philology, and the failure to distinguish between the two quite different ways of conceiving the reduction of philology to...

The chief, almost indeed the only, forms of the mind studied by Vico in the New Science are the inferior, individualising activities to which he gives the general name of "certi...

Vico's doctrine of mythology, while no less original and profound than that of poetry, is also, like the latter, not entirely lucid: for the relations between poetry and myth ar...

Vico's other doctrines on the theoretical reason, that is to say on the logic of philosophy, of physical and mathematical science and of historical study, have been expounded ab...

But this internal fear, shame or moral consciousness is aroused in man by religion. The fear is the fear of God, the shame is abasement before his face. Primitive man wanders ov...

With the dazzling light of his originality still shining before our eyes, it is impossible to fix our attention upon those doctrines and classifications which Vico drew from the...

As the cognitive mind passes from feeling without noticing to noticing with disturbed and confused faculties, and thence to the reflection of the clear mind, so analogously the...

The true and only reality then, in the world of nations, is the course of their history: and the principle which regulates this course is Providence. From this point of view the...

The mind, after traversing its course of progress, after rising from sensation successively to the imaginative and the rational universal and from violence to equity, is bound i...

By "metaphysics" we understand Vico's conception of reality as a whole, not of the world of man by itself; and we also include in the meaning of the word his ultimate negative c...

It is clear from the facts above discussed that the historical portion of the New Science could not take the shape of a history of the human race in which peoples and individual...

consequence not compelled to deal with it in its historical part. This is perhaps what Vico would have wished. But the wish was met, setting aside the necessity of guarding agai...

The period of historical research which preceded the life of Vico was, as we have said, by no means credulous or uncritical. The day was past when "chronicles of the world" were...

As the Franks, in the compilations of national history made by the Jesuit colleges and other French schools, appear stripped of all their characteristic features and reduced to...

The poet of primitive society was Homer: and if such was his character, he could not have enjoyed the profound wisdom, the delicate and lofty sense of morality, and the supreme...

Heroic society in the period of youthful vigour above described contains within itself, rigorously repressed, and in fact made into a support, the element of opposition; the sla...

Of this kind of "reflux" Vico mentions and examines only one instance: the period of European history which had in his own days for the first time been marked out definitely by...

Having reached, in his review of the course of history, his own time, a time of civilisation spread over all nations, Vico gives a rapid description of the contemporary world an...

The reader need not expect that having brought our exposition to a close we shall add a verdict upon Vico's work, or what is known as an "appreciation" of it. If the verdict has...

antiquissima,_ the two _Riposte al Giornale dei letterati,_ and the first part of the Autobiography. For the note (p. 8) on the spirit of the Reformation, see _Opere,_ ed. Ferra...

259, 107; iv. 22, 33; v. 180, 441, 209-10, 201; iv. 205, 206; iii. 274, 275; v. 230, 211, 169; iv. 201, 233, 365; v. 55, 82, 187, 196-7; iv. 224; v. 110, 112, 168, 212, 237, 217...

532; iii. 12; v. 106; v. 49; iv. 343; vi. 127; iii. 30; iv. 87; iii. 57; v. 490; iv. 40-41; iii. 30; iv. 334; iv. 35; iii. 12, 30; v. 97; iii. 234-40; iv. 49; v. 98, 131; iv. 42-3.

Chapter _VIII.--Opp._ iv. 309-13; v. 185; iii. 55, 28, 43-4; v. 97; iii. 47-52, 52-3; iv. 14, 45, 57; v. 148, 133; iii. 53, 85-7, 58; v. 240-41, 484; iv. 170-71, 180, 351.

27-8, 29-30, 97, 169, 200, 271; v. 182-3, 61-4; iii. 230; iv. 236-43, 184; iii. 450-59; v. 113, 115, 149, 211, 59, 74, 100, 183; iv. 75-6, 89; v. 206; iv. 99; iii. 273; v. 260;...

341, 253, 251-3, 259, 132, 118, 278, 311, 309, 307, 118-19, 120, 121, 481, 484-6, 293-4, 246, 526, 528, 530-31, 223-5, 444, 43, 114-15, 222-3, 460, 220, 194, 191-3, 186, 249, 36...

435-6, 465, 425, 427, 442, 427-32, 440-41, 445. 448-9, 451, 455, 428-9, 445, 449-56, 445-6, 448, 452, 378-81, 441-2, 453-4, 78, 446-7, 458-60, 433-4, 439; iv. 178; vi. 46; v. 10...

93, 34, 155; v. 86, 277, 322-3, 416, 129, 413-416, 81, 326, 86; iii. 473; v. 509-10, 102; iii. 469-75, 87, 122-3; iv. 67-71; v. 123-4, 191, 85, 100, 88, 290-91, 310, 496, 88-92,...

545, 347-8, 552, 555, 544, 554, 537, 539, 538, 551, 328, 547, 552, 512, 553, 550, 508-9, 68, 488, 547, 538-9, 231, 233, 204, 222, 226, 361, 425, 428-39, 457; iii. 357. vi. 37, 4...