Vico, Giovanni Battista :: essays research papers fc

Vico, Giovanni Battista See also Philosophy Biographies (jovnne bt-test veko), 1668-1744, Italian philosopher and historian, also known as Giambattista Vico, b. Naples. In 1699, Vico became professor of grandiloquence at the Univ. of Naples, and in 1734 he was appointed historiographer to the king of Naples. Vico is regarded by many as the get-go modern historian he was the first to formulate a systematic method of historical research, and he certain a theory of level that was far in advance of his times. For Vico, score is the account of the birth and maturement of kind-hearted societies and their institutions. He thus go out from previous systems of writing historyeither as the biographies of great men, or as the development of Gods will. Opposing the antihistorical elements of the prevailing Cartesianism (see Descartes, Ren ), he asserted that history is a legal object of human knowledge because man himself created history. Vico urged the study of language, mythology, an d tradition as techniques for the investigation of history. As a philosopher, Vico believed that every period in history had a distinct character, and that similar periods recur throughout history in the same order. He departed from the old cyclical theories of history, however, in asseverate that these periods do not recur in exactly the same form, exclusively are subject to the modifications that new circumstances and developments impose. Thus the historian arse never be a prophet. Vico also wrote on law, affirming an innate human sense of justice and natural law. Vicos major theories were developed in his unsanded Science(1725), which he revised completely (1730 1744). Vicos work was little known in his own time, and his importance was not recognized until the 19th cent. Bibliography See his narrative (tr. by M. H. Finch and T. G. Bergin, 1944) G.