Giambattista Vico 1668 – 1744
Giambattista Vico (1668 – 1744) was an Italian philosopher of the Modern era, associated with Early Modern Philosophy.
Giambattista Vico was an Italian philosopher of history, rhetorician, and jurist working in obscurity at Naples. Against the Cartesian privileging of mathematical natural science, he argued in his New Science that human beings can know the human world precisely because they have made it. He proposed that all nations pass through a recurring cycle of three ages, the divine, the heroic, and the human, each with its own forms of language, law, and imagination. Long neglected, his work shaped Romanticism, German historicism, and twentieth-century thinkers from James Joyce to Isaiah Berlin.
Key facts
- Nationality
- Italian
- Era
- Modern
- Movements
- Early Modern Philosophy
Selected quotes
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Attributed to Giambattista Vico:
“The true and the made are convertible.”
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Attributed to Giambattista Vico:
“Common sense is judgment without reflection, shared by an entire class, an entire people, an entire nation, or the entire human race.”
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“Men first feel necessity, then look for utility, next attend to comfort, still later amuse themselves with pleasure, thence grow dissolute in luxury, and finally go mad squandering their estates.”
The New Science 241 (1744) -
Attributed to Giambattista Vico:
“The order of ideas must follow the order of things.”
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Attributed to Giambattista Vico:
“Governments must conform to the nature of the men governed.”
Giambattista Vico by topic
Frequently asked about Giambattista Vico
- When did Giambattista Vico live?
- Giambattista Vico was born in 1668 and died in 1744.
- Where was Giambattista Vico from?
- Giambattista Vico was an Italian philosopher of the Modern era.
- What philosophical movements is Giambattista Vico associated with?
- Giambattista Vico was associated with Early Modern Philosophy.
- What was Giambattista Vico known for?
- Giambattista Vico was an Italian philosopher of history, rhetorician, and jurist working in obscurity at Naples.
- How many quotes are attributed to Giambattista Vico?
- There are 10 attributed quotations from Giambattista Vico in the 1001Philosophers collection, organized by topic.