An Introduction to Vico

By Donald Phillip Verene

Giambattista Vico (1668–1744) is the founder of the philosophy of history. Writers of history from Herodotus forward express views of history, but Vico is the first thinker to formulate the principles that govern the development of all nations in world history from their origin to their rise and fall. There is an extensive literature interpreting Vico’s works and issues raised therein, but there is no previous volume directed to introducing the general reader to Vico’s thought. Verene follows the development of Vico’s ideas from his early writings on education, to his interpretation of law, to his conception of a new science of the common nature of the nations.

Vico’s intention in his masterpiece, the New Science, is to present a science of the civil world that will stand alongside the new science of nature developed by Galileo and Newton. Vico finds that each nation develops through three ages—an age of gods, in which all events are determined by the actions of gods; an age of heroes, in which society embodies virtues in the figures of heroes such as Achilles and Odysseus; and an age of humans, in which society is based on political activity and the interpretation of laws. Each nation undergoes a course of these three ages and then a return course of these ages. We find ourselves, along with Vico, in the third age of the return course of European culture.