Vico: A Study of the New Science, 2nd Edition

by Leon Pompa

Professor Pompa's study of Vico has done a great deal to stimulate and inform the growing interest in the English-speaking world in this remarkable figure. It remains the only work devoted almost exclusively to an interpretation of the New Science and offers a comprehensive guide to the main theoretical problems to which the text gives rise. For this second edition Professor Pompa has responded to the reactions of reviewers and critics and added a new chapter which analyses Vico's conception of the principles which govern the development of law.

Genres: Philosophy

268 pages, Paperback

First published March 13, 1975

Reviews

[Michael David · Rating 4 out of 5]

As one of the founders of modern historiography, Vico asserts that, like Husserl did in phenomenology, that before telling people what history is, the story must be placed in a social context of that era. It is stupid to view history from the lens of modern scholarship, but it is possible precisely because human nature has remained the same: man is corrupt and avaricious, and it is through the lens of self-interest that he acts. History is thus not determinate (which is why he criticizes the Stoics, as believing that things happen due to Fate), but history is also non-random (which is why he criticizes the Epicureans, who believe that all things are random). History is in between: human nature is indeed predetermined, but what humans do given the current social context is not. The creation of human institutions is tied into necessity and utility: from the family, the community rose because of a need to maintain the peace and protect order among a group of families.

The conception of ‘God’ to Vico is at first little more than a name for the unknown causes of things, that early man would attribute sentience to everything, and that they would personify these unknown causes and attributed their own barbaric natures to the person thus created. The transition between the Old and the New Testament between the rather harsh God and the more kindly and placid Jesus gives credence to this interpretation by Leon Pompa.

Ultimately, Pompa points out that Vico’s New Science is his affirmation that man can write history through self-analysis and self-understanding: because human beings share a common nature, if situated in historical facts and a scientific approach, history can be written even if the people in the past are no longer extant, as human nature has axioms that can be modified according to the social environs.

[Judy]

"History is thus a uniquely human form of knowledge made possible by the exercise of self-reflection, which is in itself a unique human capacity." p. 169
"In the end, therefore, Vico's conception of a human science, and his claim that this is epistemologically superior to any human science, rests upon a thesis about the capacity humans have for reaching self-determination. The necessity to use this knowledge in constructing history makes demands upon the historian over and above those he already shares with the naturalist scientist. It also, however, allows him to offer explanations which are ultimately more intelligible than any which are available in the natural sciences. " p. 18o