VICO, vi•'l:6, GIOVANNI BATTISTA 1668-1744 ). An Italian philosopher. He was horn at Naples, spent the whole of his life in that city, and died there. He studied law, history, and philosophy, and obtained the chair of rhetoric in the Univer sity of Naples. In 1734 he was appointed his toriographer to Charles III_ King of Naples. The great work which has made his name illustrious, the Principj di »nu seienzat ?morn d' intorno alb, comme»e natura delle na.7;io»i, first appeared at Naples in 1725: but it was completely recast in a subsequent Maim], published in 1730. A third edition, in which the work was considerably en larged, was published in 1744, shortly after the author's death. On account partly of its obscure and enigmatical style, the work was long in ar riving at its proper place in European literature. The Seicaza nuova was virtually unknown out of Italy until 1822, when a German translation of it appeared at Leipzig. It was five years later
translated into French by Sliehelet ; and the author has since that time found his proper rank among the wort profound of modern think ers.
Vico proposed to himself the lask of distin guishing amid social phenomena the regular from the accidental; of finding out the laws which gov ern the formation, the growth, and the decay of all societies; in fine, of tracing the outlines of the history of peoples—the idea of which he himself believed to have existed from eternity in the mind of God. In 1818 the Marquis de Villa Rosa published Vieo's complete works. A second edi tion appeared in 1835. Ferrari, Pico ct /'/lobo (Paris, 1839) ; Cantoni, Pico (Turin, 18117) ; Flint, Pico (Edinburgh and London, 1885).