COMING SPRING 2026
Giambattista Vico and the Concept of Society
By Timothy Harfield
Society did not always exist.
The emergence of disciplinary sociology in the nineteenth century was made possible because of a rethinking of society. With modernity, society suddenly became a thing that acted upon reality in a way that could be understood separately from the individual and the state. Although our modern conception of society is most commonly attributed to Montesquieu, many have suggested that it was actually an Italian thinker named Giambattista Vico who first made the discovery. How else could Vico found a ‘sociology’ one hundred and fifty years before the term was coined by Auguste Comte?
In spite of Vico’s reputation as an important proto-sociologist, there has never been a systematic study of the concept of society as it appears in his work. In The Occasions of Community, Timothy D. Harfield explores several questions about the nature of society with important consequences for the history of the social sciences. What were the conditions that made it possible for our modern idea of society to emerge? What was it about the modern view of society that made the discipline of sociology possible? Is Vico’s masterwork, The New Science, rightly praised as an important work of early sociology? Or does Vico’s interest in the work of divine providence betray the fact that, for all Vico’s brilliance as a thinker, The New Science was not yet modern?
Timothy Harfield
Timothy Harfield is Founder of Felice Mosca Publishing. He was written and spoken widely on humanism, posthumanism, artificial intelligence, pedagody. He has a Master of Arts in Sociology from the University of Alberta, and PhD in Philosophy from Emory University. He lives near OCala, Florida where he operates a horse farm with his wife, Elisa Wallace, and dogs Pocket and Fergus.
Table of Contents
1 INTRODUCTION. Why Society? | Why Vico?
2 A HISTORY OF THE CONCEPT OF SOCIETY. Aristotle | Roman Law and Stoic Cosmopolitanism | Medieval Religious Thinking | The Emergence of Society
3 THE CONCEPT OF SOCIETY IN EARLY VICO. On Self Knowledge | On Virtue and Wisdom | On True Learning | On Education for the Common Good |
On The Liberal Arts and Political Power | On The Proper Order of Studies
4 SOCIETY AS A FIRST PRINCIPLE. On the Most Ancient Wisdom of the Italians | Critique of Metaphysics | Critique of the Self as First Principle |
Universal Law | Vico and Malebranche | Eternal Ideas and the Possibility of Community | God’s Goodness and the Preservation of the Whole |
Human Nature and the Life of Contemplation | The Occasional Nature of Human Society | An Anatomy of Natural Society
5 VICO’S NEW SCIENCE OF SOCIETY. A New Metaphysics, A New Method | The Occasions of Human Society | The Age of Gods, the Age of Necessity |
The Age of Heroes, The Age of Utility | The Age of Men, the Age of Luxury