Vico

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.

Preface; 1. The structure of the Scienza Nuova; 2. Critique of current historiography; 3. Human nature and social change; 4. Human nature and historical change; 5. Providence; 6. The character of Vico’s metaphysics; 7. The problem of knowledge; 8. The problem of methodology; 9. The ideal eternal history: its theoretical character; 10. The ideal eternal history: its deductive character; 11. The ideal eternal history: its sociological content; 12. The ideal eternal history: its historical content; 13. Philosophy and historical interpretation; 14. Philosophy and historical confirmation; 15. Theory of knowledge; 16. The character of Vico’s theory of knowledge; 17. Law, providence and the barbarism of reflection; 18. Appendix. Humanist interpretations; Bibliography; Index.