VICO. GIAMBATTISTA (or GIOVANNI BATTISTA), a jurist, philosopher, and critic, was born at Naples, 1668, spent the whole of his life in that city, and died there in 1744. He was the son of a small book-seller. He was educated by the Jesuits, and afterward studied forthe bar. Weak health preventing/him from following his profession, he became tutor in jurisprudence to a nephew of the bishop of Ischia; and after filling this position for nine years, he obtained the chair of rhetoric in the university of Naples. This office was poorly paid; but though much distinguished by persons of the highest position, Vico did not succeed in getting a better one until the accession of the Bour bons, 1735, when he was appointed historiographer to the king of Naples. As he mar ried early, and had a large family, his life was passed in great poverty, and it was, more over, imbittered by family troubles, and by constant ill-health The great work which has made his name illustrious, the Scienza Nuova. first appeared in 1725; but it was completely recast iu a subsequent edition. published in 1730, with the effect of making it more imposing as a system, at the expense of a great loss of clearness. A third edition, in which. the work was considerably enlarged, was published in 1745, shortly after the author's death. In the Scienza Nuo-ca, Vico brought together, and attempted to fuse into a system, opinions which he had previously advanced in a somewhat numerous series of separate treatises. The work was long in arriving at its proper place in European literature, which must be in a great measure attributed to its obscure and enigmatical style. , Much of the obscurity arises from the use of an uncouth terminology, which the author often leaves unexplained, and in the case of the later and authoritative editions) from the rigorous application of the deductive method to subjects which do not always admit of it. The Scienza Nuova was virtually unknown out of Italy in 1822, when a German translation of it appeared at Leipsic. It was. a few years later, trans lated into French (with some curtailment) by M. Michelet (Principes de la Philosophie de C Histoire, traduits de la "Scienza Nuova' de G. B. Vico; Paris, 182'i); and the author has since that,found his proper rank among the most profound, original, and ingenious of modern thinkers.
The Scienza _nova (De' Princ0 d'una Scienza _nova d'interno alla Comune Natura della .Nazioni) may be described as a novuin organum of politico-historical knowledge. Observing, amid the infinite variety of thoughts and actions, of language and manners, which the history of nations presents, a concurrence of the same characteristics, in the political changes which peoples the furthest removed from each other in time and place have passed through, an essential similarity of development, Vico proposed to himself the task of distinguishing amid social phenomena the regular from the accidental; of finding out the laws which govern the formation, the growth, and the decay of all socie ties; in fine, of tracing the outlines of the universal, the ideal history of society—the idea of which he himself believed to have existed from eternity in the mind of God. In doing this, he attempted, by means of historical criticism on the widest basis to illustrate the inter-dependence of all the sciences; to show that the progress of each of them is related to that of all the others, and the progress of all of them dependent upon, while also acting powerfully upon the general condition of society. And while holding that the actual state of every society is the result of a free development of the human facul ties, he attempted to give a historical demonstration of the existence of a Divine Provi dence directing the career of nations, overruling the designs which men propose to themselves; operating, however, not by positive laws, or arbitrary interferences, but by means of methods and expedients which men resort to freely. It has been not inaptly said that the Scienza Nuova includes a system of social (as distinguished from natural) theology—a demonstration of God's government of the world, and of the laws in which that government consists. Vico, in these inquiries, accepted from Descartes the indi vidual consciousness as one of the criteria of truth; but lie also employed another—the collective consciousness, or the common sense of mankind—the accord of the race, as it may be gathered from history—in a word, authority.