Product Description: Barely acknowledged in his lifetime, the New Science of Giambattista Vico (1668-1744) is an astonishingly perceptive and ambitious attempt to decipher the history, mythology and laws of the ancient world. Discarding the Renaissance notion of the classical as an idealised model for the modern, it argues that the key to true understanding of the past lies in accepting that the customs and emotional lives of ancient Greeks and Romans, Egyptians, Jews and Babylonians were radically different from our own. Along the way, Vico explores a huge variety of topics, ranging from physics to poetics, money to monsters, and family structures to the Flood. Marking a crucial turning-point in humanist thinking, New Science has remained deeply influential since the dawn of Romanticism, inspiring the work of Karl Marx and even influencing the framework for Joyce's Finnegan's Wake.
Profound Study of Myth, Piety, History and Civics Vico's immense view and creativity is expressed at the outset with his Tableau of Civil Institutions: a graphical representation of his incredible work; this alone underscores the reason for Joyce's sparked imagination. The greatness of this work is in its deep structure and layers of examination. I came upon this work looking for references to Sanchuniathon, a little known historian preceding Herodotus. Vico inspires many epiphanies particularly the regarding the kernel of wisdom as piety, mythologies: the allegories of myths, and the origin of aristocracy, democracy and monarchy. Vico moves across many subjects making extensive and resolute political analysis of each one including, notably, the origin of Roman Assemblies and the oath of enmity the heroes swore against the plebeians. Any student of politics can find notions truly relevant to the present, such as under: Section 13 Chapter 1 "Further Proofs Drawn from Mixed Commonwealths Which Combine Earlier Governments with Later States" Where Vico writes: "The newly free peoples found themselves masters of their own sovereign powers...By pursuing their own private interests, free peoples let themselves be seduced by the powerful into subjecting their own public freedom to the ambition of others." To sum, as almost only a great epic can yet in an entirely explicative, vast and reflective manner, Vico dives deeply down to the grit and spirit of the ties that bind us and that forge our societies: citizenship, marriage, religion and death.
Places to find Vico Several people asked where Vico is taught / who studies Vico. The Graduate Institute at St. John's College (Great Books program) studies Vico in the History segment, which is really Philosophy of History, for 8 classes, 1/4 of the one of the three History classes. The Great Books people seem to have thought Vico was worth reading. The late philosopher Eric Voegelin wrote an essay in the compendium "Order and History" singling out Vico's work for its insights and calling for scholars to take up the "New Science." At Emory University Donald Philip Verene runs the Institute for Vico studies. There are also many collections of essays on Vico by both American and European scholars. St. John's College library in Annapolis has a good number of them.
"Reading Vico" is a new experience: This ain't a novel, it's written in numbered axioms and conclusions, but it's rewarding work, like Plato's Republic or Tocqueville's Democracy in America. You see versions of Vico's ideas in movies today like I Am Legend. As to how to approach the book--I would suggest reading according to the schedule/order listed on the St. John's College Grad Institute website. You can download the Graduate Reading List for the History segment--it's free. Don't stop until you reach the end--therein lies the big finale (it's much better if you don't read ahead)!!
Read Vico! When I read Vico in a public space--subway, park bench, stoop--I always fear that someone will approach me and ask what his "general thing" is. Even after reading this book for a few years, I still really don't know. I'd probably say something like "it's about history and poetry and salt marshes and thunder."
Still, Joyce said that reading Vico made his imagination grow. I completely agree. Even if you get frustrated with a few vague aphorisms, you can always blame the fact that Vico fell off a ladder as a child and damaged his brain--whatever. Read to understand, but if you don't understand, still read. This is a truly remarkable book.
Often Overlooked Masterpiece Most people come to Vico for one of three reasons: historical perspective (fans of Spengler), philosophical curiosity (fans of Marx), or literary insight (fans of Joyce). Regardless of the motivation, the reader will be confronted with a highly unconventional text at first: the open of the book is an overlong explanation of the bookplate. Then we are faced with a collection of Nietzschian aphorisms. By the third part of the book, if the second part hasn't trigged an interest, the explication of parts 1 and 2 grab and take hold of the reader. The result? Once the reader finishes the book, the seemingly obtuse open seems perfectly reasonable for in the course of the text for Vico assimilates history, anthropology, philosophy, philology, and genealogy into a comprehensive whole which is perfectly symbolized by the bookplate. Though, at times, his premises seem rather far-fetched (Vico himself notes this), the intent of the work is rarely obscured. The only complaint? Perhaps Vico could have expanded the work more to make his attempted scope and range cohere better. But then, Frazier did this in a similar work (The Golden Bough) and we have 12 volumes to show for it!
Masterpiece That Vico is largely unknown, even by the so-called experts teaching in our universitiues, while mediocrities and worse of the past half century are lauded and taught widely is yet another indication that our educational standards are dumbed down considerably. Vico is difficult to read, and we are increasingly an intellectually lazy people who prefer simplistic platitudes that sooth our postmodernist prejudices.
I give this Penguin edition only a 4 not because New Science is not itself a 5 or because the translation itself is weak, but because Vico requires copious notes. Most who read this work will do so on their own, and they need considerable help unless they are already as well read in the Classics and works of the Medieval and Renaissance eras as was Vico himself. Perhaps soon we will see an edition that meets that need, which also might encourage a few more to teach Vico, before we fall into the re-barbarism.
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