"This volume comprises a new critical edition and translation of Giambattista Vico's challenging and provoking early work On the Most Ancient Wisdom of the Italians. The Latin edition faithfully reproduces Vico's original 1710 text as first printed; it is accompanied by Jason Taylor's complete, accurate, and highly readable English translation." "In an illuminating introduction to the volume, Robert Miner elucidates Vico's short but difficult work; at the same time, he allows the reader to assess the importance of that work, in absolute terms as well as relative to Vico's other writings and the work of his numerous interlocutors in the republic of letters." "Taken as a whole, this volume provides the text and guidance to support a fresh engagement with Vico's thought, especially his earliest philosophical works. It will also serve as a valuable resource for students and scholars with interests in eighteenth-century thought."--BOOK JACKET.

Giambattista Vico (1668-1744) was one of the most original and idiosyncratic philosophers before Kant and Hegel. Although Giorgio Vasari had already diagnosed a cycle of rise, blossoming and decline in the history of art, Vico was the first to base this on a philosophical system. Isolated in Naples from direct contact with the philosophical life of his times, he worked at his grand design of the cycles of rise, blossoming, decline and eternal return which he saw in all areas of culture. His points of reference were ancient mythology and Greek and Roman history. To that extent, he is regarded today as the founder of the philosophy of history and the precursor of a tradition which extends to Hegel and Oswald Spengler's "Decline of the West."

Giambattista Vico is now acknowledged to be one of the most important figures in the history of European philosophy and social thought and increasingly attention is being focused on his writings. These, however have been difficult to obtain in English and many have never been translated. A real need therefore exists and to meet this Professor Pompa has here translated and introduced a selection of the central, representative texts, where the most important and seminal of Vico's ideas are developed. The volume will make a major contribution towards the study of Vico's thought and this period in the history of philosophy. It will be invaluable to students of those subjects and of the social sciences generally.

Although Vico (1668-1744) lived his whole life as an obscure academic in Naples, his New Science is an astonishingly ambitious attempt to decode the history, mythology and law of the ancient world.

It argues that the key to true understanding lies in accepting that the customs and emotional lives of the Greeks and Romans, Egyptians, Jews and Babylonians, were utterly different from our own. In examining these huge themes, Vico offers countless fresh insights into topics ranging from physics to (poetic) politics, money to monsters, and family structures to the Flood. Deeply influential since the dawn of Romanticism, the New Science even inspired the framework for Joyce’s Ulysses. This powerful new translation makes it clear why it marked a turning point in humanist thinking as significant as Newton’s contemporary revolution in physics.

Giambattista Vico: Keys to the "New Science" brings together in one volume translations, commentaries, and essays that illuminate the background of Giambattista Vico's major work. Thora Ilin Bayer and Donald Phillip Verene have collected a series of texts that help us to understand the progress of Vico's thinking, culminating in the definitive version of the New Science, which was published in 1744.

Bayer and Verene provide useful introductions both to the collection as a whole and to the individual writings. What emerges is a clear picture of the decades-long process through which Vico elaborated his revolutionary theory of history and culture. Of particular interest are the first sketch of the new science from his earlier work, the Universal Law, and Vico's response to the false book notice regarding the first version of his New Science.

The volume also includes additions to the 1744 edition that Vico had written out but that do not appear in the English translations including his brief chapter on the "Reprehension of the Metaphysics of Descartes, Spinoza, and Locke" and a bibliography of all of Vico's writings that have appeared in English. Giambattista Vico: Keys to the "New Science" is a unique and vital companion for anyone reading or rereading this landmark of Western intellectual history."

A pioneering treatise that aroused great controversy when it was first published in 1725, Vico's New Science is acknowledged today to be one of the few works of authentic genius in the history of social theory. It represents the most ambitious attempt before Comte at comprehensive science of human society and the most profound analysis of the class struggle prior to Marx.

A fresh translation of The New Science, with detailed footnotes that will help both the scholar and the new reader navigate Vico's masterpiece The New Science is the major work of Italian philosopher Giambattista Vico. First published in 1725 and revised in 1730 and 1744, it calls for a reinterpretation of human civilization by tracing the stages of historical development shared by all societies. Almost unknown during his lifetime, the work had a profound influence on later thinkers, from Montesquieu and Marx to Joyce and Gadamer. This edition offers a fresh translation and detailed annotations which enable the reader to track Vico's multiple allusions to other texts. The introduction situates the work firmly within a contemporary context and newly establishes Vico as a thinker of modernity.

This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ++++ The below data was compiled from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping to ensure edition identification: ++++ Oeuvres Choisies De Vico, Contenant Ses M�moires, Volume 1; Oeuvres Choisies De Vico, Contenant Ses M�moires; Giambattista Vico Giambattista Vico, Jules Michelet L. Hachette, 1835