On The Most Ancient Wisdom Of The Italians

On the Most Ancient Wisdom of the Italians, originally published in 1710, is widely regarded as Vico's most significant work after the New Science and the Autobiography. Subtitled "The Book of Metaphysics," it was one of three planned volumes of a larger work that was never published, and it marks Vico's transition from rhetorician to philosopher of historical knowledge. This edition incorporates translations from the Italian of a contemporary review and Vico's responses, published in 1711 and 1712. L. M. Palmer's translation helps make more accessible a treatise of vital importance for an understanding of Vico's epistemology, psychology, and philosophy of mathematics.

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. --

The increasing investment in scientific knowledge, in its production, distribution and reproduction, is acquiring greater social significance. Everything that is regarded as knowledge in society has become a legitimate subject matter for academic investigations from various disciplines and for practitioners.

At a time when women were generally excluded from scholarly discourse in the intellectual centers of Europe, four extraordinary female letterate proved their parity as they lectured in prominent scientific and literary academies and published in respected journals. During the Italian Enlightenment, Maria Gaetana Agnesi, Giuseppa Eleonora Barbapiccola, Diamante Medaglia Faini, and Aretafila Savini de' Rossi were afforded unprecedented deference in academic debates and epitomized the increasing ability of women to influence public discourse. The Contest for Knowledge reveals how these four women used the methods and themes of their male counterparts to add their voices to the vigorous and prolific debate over the education of women during the eighteenth century. In the texts gathered here, the women discuss the issues they themselves thought most urgent for the equality of women in Italian society specifically and in European culture more broadly. Their thoughts on this important subject reveal how crucial the eighteenth century was in the long history of debates about women in the academy.

The Autobiography of Giambattista Vico is significant both as a source of insight into the influences on the eighteenth-century philosopher's intellectual development and as one of the earliest and most sophisticated examples of philosophical autobiography. Referring to himself in the third person, Vico records the course of his life and the influence that various thinkers had on the development of concepts central to his mature work. Beyond its relevance to the development of the New Science, the Autobiography is also of interest for the light it sheds on Italian culture in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Still regarded by many as the best English-language translation of this classic work, the Cornell edition was widely lauded when first published in 1944. Wrote the Saturday Review of Literature: "Here was something new in the art of self-revelation. Vico wrote of his childhood, the psychological influences to which he was subjected, the social conditions under which he grew up and received an education and evolved his own way of thinking. It was so outstanding a piece of work that it was held up as a model, which it still is."

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.

This intellectual history study establishes Ballanche as an important figure in the intellectual life of early nineteenth-century France, and demonstrates how his religio-social project effected a critical step in the historical-mindedness of the Romantic period.

This book is the first translation from Latin into English of the juridical writings of one of the greatest minds of the Enlightenment and one of the greatest figures in Italian philosophy. The complete text is fully annotated, supplied with an extensive introduction, completed by historical and biographical documents, and graced with evocative illustrations. Legal scholars, philosophers, historians, and political scientists throughout the world may now discover a classic by one of the world’s great jurists. Giambattista Vico (1668-1744) spent his entire life in Naples, where he taught at the University of Naples from 1699, the year he won the Chair of Rhetoric and Forensic Eloquence, to 1741, the year Gennaro Vico, his son, took over the duty of lecturer. In 1723, after having written the Universal Right, he competed, though without success, for the Chair of Civil Law, at the same University. He wrote the Universal Right in Latin, the official and universal language of scholarly works, to prove his competency in the field of law and jurisprudence. The Universal Right had a continuous relevance to the development and growth of juristic studies, both in Italy and in Europe, where it was translated into French and German. From the eighteenth to the twentieth century, the Universal Right influenced the writings and teaching of the practitioners of the Forum—Emmanuele Duni, Antonio Genovesi, Jules Michelet, Francesco Lomonaco, Mario Francesco Pagano, Gian Domenico Romagnosi, Cesare Lombroso, Pasquale Galluppi, Cesare Beccaria, and, among the many recent jurists, Emilio Betti, who taught in Italy and Germany, the author of Allgemeine Auslegungslehre als Methodik der Geisteswissenschaften. Due to the influence of Benedetto Croce’s disapproving interpretation, the Universal Right remained often overshadowed by the New Science in its three editions of 1725, 1730, and 1744. As we start the twenty-first century, scholars are by-passing Croce’s statement, and are looking at the Universal Right with due objectivity and renewed interest. While the New Science has been available since 1948, the Universal Right appears now, for the first time, in English, the contemporary universal language. Contrary to the opinion of some scholars, Vico, in the New Science, stated that he did not regret having written the Universal Right; he used the copy in his possession as a reference manual for all the works written afterward, until 1735. Andrea Battistini wrote, “When an English translation of the Diritto universale [Universal Right] is available, which will be able to rectify the trend toward contemporary relevance with a greater sense of historicity through an emphasis on the debt to Roman jurisprudence, one will finally arrive at a synthetic overall view, obscured today by the numerous specialized analyses. At all events, however, it is to be hoped that the multiplicity of voices, the dialectical battle of interpretations and the duel between historicity and contemporary relevance do not subside”. Isaiah Berlin stated that, “Vico was not read,” and, thus, his ideas were the treasure-trove in the hands of a few specialists and, in like manner, they remained to our day. Other scholars have mentioned the “copiatori di [copycats of] Vico” when speaking about the history and transmission of ideas. In regard to Universal Right, contemporary research and writing is pale and scarce, given the unavailability of translations and the difficulties of the original.