VICO, GIOVANNI BATTISTA (1668-1744), Italian jur ist and philosopher, was born at Naples on June 23, 1668, and in 1697 became professor of rhetoric at the university there. Mean while he had acted as tutor to the nephews of the bishop of Ischia, G. B. Rocca, at the castle of Vatolla, near Cilento, in the province of Salerno. There he passed nine studious years, chiefly devoted to classical reading, Plato and Tacitus being his favourite authors, because "the former described the ideal man, and the latter man as he really is." Two authors exercised a weighty influence on his mind—Francis Bacon and Grotius. He was no follower of their ideas, indeed often opposed to them; but he was stimulated by Bacon to investigate certain great problems of history and philosophy, while Grotius led him to philosophic jurisprudence. In 1708 he published his De ratione studiorum, in 1710 De an tiquissima Italorum sapientia, in 172o De universi iuris uno prin cipio et fine uno, and in 1721 De constantia iurisprudentis. He failed to secure the university chair of jurisprudence which he had hoped these works would secure for him. His great work, Prin cipii d'una scienza nuova appeared in 1725 (2nd ed. 173o, which is practically a new work). In 1735 Charles III. of Naples made Vico historiographer-royal, with a yearly stipend of Zoo ducats. Soon after his mind began to give way, but during frequent inter vals of lucidity he made new corrections in his great work, of which a third edition appeared in 1744, prefaced by a letter of dedication to Cardinal Trojano Acquaviva. He died on Jan. 20, and was buried in the church of the Gerolimini.
Vico is perhaps the greatest name in the Neapolitan tradition of jurisprudence. His aim was the relation of the history of law to that of the human mind, and the problem with which he was faced is stated in its final form in the Scienza Nuova. The ques tion is—if the principle of justice be one and immutable, how are the varying codes to be accounted for? His solution is offered in his Universal Law (Diritto universale).
Law, he held, emanates from the conscience of mankind, and participates in the changes of the human mind. The reasons for its changes, therefore, must be sought in the general history of human development. The primitive sentiment of justice is uncon
scious and instinctive, and expresses itself in religious forms of a concrete nature, mankind being at this stage incapable of abstract ideas (cf. Vinopadoff, History of Jurisprudence). These give place to abstract formula, and these in turn to the direct manifestation of the philosophic principles of law. Thus the history of Roman Law, for instance, can be divided into three parts, the divine, the heroic and the human, corresponding to the three main phases of general Roman history. Thus in the varying aspects of law Vico found the expression of a single fundamental principle.
This theory seems to have originated in his study of Roman law, which Vico saw as a continuous progress from the primitive law of the XII. Tables to the universal and flexible jus gentium. This conception he generalized into a complete philosophy of history. The history of humanity he sees as a process of devel opment from "poetic wisdom," the impersonal, religious, instinc tive ideas of primitive society to "occult wisdom," which turns divinely implanted ideas into conscious philosophical wisdom. Like most discoverers of a system, however, Vico carried it fur ther than it would go. His law of cycles, the "eternal ideal his tory, invariably followed by all nations," which is the expression of this theory, seeks to reduce the whole course of history to con formity with this threefold succession of phases, divine, heroic and human, which he sees exemplified in government, language, liter ature, jurisprudence and civilization.