VICO, Giambattista, or Giovanni Bat tista, Italian jurist, philosopher and critic: b. Naples, 23 June 1668; d. 20 Jan. 1744. The son of a bookseller, he was educated by the Jesuits and afterward studied for the bar. Weak health prevented him from following his profession; and after nine years he obtained the chair of rhetoric in the University of Naples. In 1735 he was appointed historiog rapher to the king of Naples. As he married early, and had a large family, his life was passed in poverty; and it was, moreover, embittered by family troubles, and by constant ill health. The great work which has made his name illustrious, the (Principi d'una Scienza nuova d'intorno alla comune natura dclle nazioni,' atmeared 1725; but it was completely recast in an edition 1730, with the effect of making it more imposing as a system, at the expense of a great loss of clear ness. A third edition, enlarged, was published shortly after the author'g death. In the (Sci enza Nuova,) Vico brought together, and at tempted to fuse into a system, opinions which he had previously advanced in separate treatises. The slowness of the work in gaining its proper place in European literature must be attributed largely to its obscure and enigmatical style. Much of the obscurity arises from an uncouth terminology, which the author often leaves un explained, and (in the later and authoritative editions) from rigorous application of the de ductive method to subjects which do not always admit of it. The (Scienza Nuova) was virtu ally unknown out of Italy- as late as 1822, when a German translation of it appeared at Leipzig.
It was, a few years later, translated into French (with some curtailment) by Michelet (Principes de la Philosophie de l'Histoire, tra duits de la (Scienza Nuova' de G. B, Vico) ; Paris 1827) ; and Vico has since found his proper rank among the most profound, original, and ingenious of modern thinkers.
The (Scienza Nuova) (De' Principj d'una Scienza Nuova d'intorno alla Comune Natura della NazioriP) may be described as a (Novuna Organum) of politico-historical knowledge. Ob
serving) amid the infinite variety of thoughts and actions. of language and manners, which the history of nations presents, a constant recur rence of the same characteristics, and, in the political changes which peoples the furthest re moved from each other in time and place have passed through, an essential similarity of-deo& oprr.ent, Vico proposed to himself the task of distinguishing amid social phenotnena the regu lar from the accidental; of finding out the laws which govern the formation, the. g.rowth, •and the decay of all societies; in fine, of tracing the outlines of the universal, the ideal history of society—the idea of which he himself bolietred to have existed from eternity in the mind of God. In doing this, he attempted, by historical criticism on the widest basis, to illustrate the interdependence of. all the sciences; to show that the progress of each is related to that of all, and the 'progress of all of them. depend ent on, while also acting powerfully on, the general condition of society. While hold ing that the actual state. of every society is the result of a free development of the human fac ulties, he attempted to give a historical demon, stration of the existence of a Divine Providence directing the career of nations, overruling the designs which men propcise to their-selves; open ating, however, not by positive laws or arbitrary interferences, bueby methods and expedients to w'hich men freely resort—i.e., God's providen tial governance of nations is not by continued miracle, but, like His rule over nature, by nat ural laws. It has been said that the (Scienza Nuova' includes a system of social (as distin guished from natural) theology—a demon stration of God's government af the world, and of the laws in which that government consists. Vico, in these inquiries, accepted from Descartes the individual consciousness as one of the cri teria of truth; but he employed another also — the collective consciousness, or dia common sense of mankind—the.accord of the race, as it may be gathered from history—in a word, authority.