Giambattista Vico

Agora

Giambattista Vico

1668–1744

A first way ina deliberate simplification – the portrait says more

We can truly understand only what we ourselves have made – so human history and culture, not nature, is what we can really know.

Placement

Empiricism, Enlightenment & Liberalism · Southern Europe · Society & History, Language, Epistemology

Neapolitan professor of rhetoric: we can truly know only what we have made (verum factum) – hence history rather than nature.

Key ideas

Verum ipsum factum
Course and recourse of nations
Poetic wisdom

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Influence

Influenced by 3

Plato

influenced by
Vico’s autobiography (1725–28) names Plato among his ‘four authors’: Plato contemplates man as he should be, Tacitus as he is, and Vico sought to join both. G. Vico, Vita di Giambattista Vico scritta da se medesimo (1725–28); SEP “Giambattista Vico”
Evidence: also in InPhO · InPhO
Plato › 428–348 BCE
Francis Bacon

influenced by
Vico counted Bacon among his ‘four authors’ and modelled his oration On the Study Methods of Our Time (1709) on Bacon’s survey of the advancement of learning. G. Vico, De nostri temporis studiorum ratione (1709); Vita scritta da se medesimo (1725–28); SEP “Giambattista Vico”
Evidence: AI draft
Francis Bacon › 1561–1626
Hugo Grotius

influenced by
Vico counted Grotius among his ‘four authors’ and in the New Science (1725/1744) named him a ‘prince’ of natural-law theory, faulting his neglect of providence. G. Vico, Vita scritta da se medesimo (1725–28); Scienza nuova (1725, 1744); SEP “Giambattista Vico”
Evidence: also in InPhO · InPhO
Hugo Grotius › 1583–1645

Influenced 4

Benedetto Croce

influenced ✓
In The Philosophy of Giambattista Vico (1911) Croce made Vico a precursor of his historicism, having presented him in the Aesthetic (1902) as the discoverer of aesthetics. B. Croce, Estetica come scienza dell’espressione e linguistica generale (1902); La filosofia di Giambattista Vico (1911); SEP “Benedetto Croce”
Evidence: also in Wikidata · Wikidata · InPhO
Benedetto Croce › 1866–1952
Isaiah Berlin

influenced
Berlin read Vico as the discoverer of a distinct kind of historical understanding: knowing from within what humans themselves have made (Vico and Herder, 1976). I. Berlin, Vico and Herder: Two Studies in the History of Ideas (1976); G. Vico, Scienza nuova (1725; 1744)
Evidence: AI draft
Isaiah Berlin › 1909–1997
Hayden White

influenced
White took Vico’s four master tropes – metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, irony – as the deep structure of historical consciousness (Metahistory, 1973; ‘The Tropics of History’, 1976). H. White, Metahistory (1973); “The Tropics of History: The Deep Structure of the New Science”, in G. Tagliacozzo and D. P. Verene (eds.), Giambattista Vico’s Science of Humanity (1976); G. Tagliacozzo and H. White (eds.), Giambattista Vico: An International Symposium (1969)
Evidence: AI draft
Hayden White › 1928–2018
Edward Said

influenced
Said took from Vico, discussed in Beginnings (1975), the principle that humans know what they have made, treating the Orient as a human construction (Orientalism, 1978). E. W. Said, Beginnings: Intention and Method (1975); Orientalism (1978), introduction; SEP “Giambattista Vico”
Evidence: AI draft
Edward Said › 1935–2003

Criticism

Criticizes 1

René Descartes

criticised
Vico objected that Descartes’ cogito gives consciousness, not knowledge, of being, for we know truly only what we make (De antiquissima Italorum sapientia, 1710). G. Vico, De antiquissima Italorum sapientia (1710), ch. I; De nostri temporis studiorum ratione (1709); SEP “Giambattista Vico”
Evidence: AI draft
René Descartes › 1596–1650

Works

1725The New Science
The ages of gods, heroes and men: a science of the common nature of nations.

Position

Against Descartes, Vico held that the true and the made are convertible (verum factum): we can fully know only what we ourselves have made. Nature was made by God and remains partly opaque to us, but the human world of languages, laws and institutions was made by humans and can be understood from within. His New Science traces how every nation passes through an age of gods, an age of heroes and an age of men, and may fall back into barbarism and begin again. Rediscovered in the nineteenth century, he became a founder of the philosophy of history and the human sciences.

Life & context

Giambattista Vico was born in Naples in 1668, the son of a poor bookseller, and was largely self-taught. For nine years he worked as a family tutor in the Cilento, south of Salerno, and in 1699 became professor of rhetoric at the University of Naples, a modestly paid post he held for four decades. His bid for a chair in law failed in 1723. He died in Naples in 1744.