Giambattista Vico

Giambattista Vico (born Giovan Battista Vico 23 June 1668 – 23 January 1744) was an Italian political philosopher and rhetorician, historian and jurist, of the Age of Enlightenment. He criticized the expansion and development of modern rationalism, was an apologist for Classical Antiquity, a precursor of systematic and complex thought, in opposition to Cartesian analysis and other types of reductionism, and was the first expositor of the fundamentals of social science and of semiotics.

Uniform ideas originating among entire peoples unknown to each other must have a common ground of truth.

Quotes

• Verum esse ipsum factum
  • The truth itself is made.
    • On the Most Ancient Wisdom of the Italians (1710)

• Men first feel necessity, then look for utility, next attend to comfort, still later amuse themselves with pleasure, thence grow dissolute in luxury, and finally go mad and waste their substance. (Gli uomini prima sentono il necessario, dipoi badanoall’utile, appresso avvertiscono il comodo, più innanzi sidilettano del piacere, quindi si dissolvono nel lusso, e finalmente impazzano in istrappazzar le sostanze.)
  • The New Science 241 (1744)

• Uniform ideas originating among entire peoples unknown to each other must have a common ground of truth.
  • The New Science 144 (1744)

See also

• Polybius
• Oswald Spengler

External links

• Works by Giambattista Vico at Project Gutenberg
• Institute for Vico Studies
• Entry in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• Entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• Entry in the Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory
• Vico's Poetic Philosophy within Europe's Cultural Identity, Emanuel L. Paparella
• Vico's Theory of the Causes of Historical Change by Leon Pompa, archived at The Institute for Cultural Research
• Portale Vico - Vico Portal
• Text of the New Science in multiple formats
• Essays on Vico's creative influence on James Joyce's Finnegans Wake
• Samuel Beckett's essay on Vico and Joyce
• Vico's creative influence on Richard James Allen's The Way Out At Last Cycle
• Vico's Historical Mythology