Giambattista Vico
Giambattista Vico (1668–1744) was an Italian philosopher and historian who argued that human beings can know the social world because they make it.
Verum factum principle: The principle that what is made can be known by its maker. Vico uses this idea to explain why human beings can know history and institutions.
The New Science: Vico’s work on the principles governing the rise and development of nations. It is the fullest presentation of his method for understanding human history.
Naples: A major southern Italian city and the center of Vico’s academic and civic life. Vico spent his career in Naples, whose intellectual culture shaped his work.
Historicism: An approach that interprets ideas and institutions in relation to their specific historical conditions. Vico’s insistence that societies must be understood through their development helped shape historicist thought.
Historical knowledge: Knowledge of the past gained through evidence, interpretation, and contextual understanding. Vico treats history as knowable through the human practices that formed it.
Vico's corsi e ricorsi: Vico’s account of historical courses and recurrences through which nations rise, decline, and begin again. This pattern organizes his explanation of recurring political and cultural change.
Cartesianism: The philosophical tradition inspired by René Descartes, emphasizing reason and clear, distinct ideas. Vico challenged its tendency to privilege mathematical certainty over historical understanding.
Cultural anthropology: The study of human societies and cultures through their practices, meanings, and institutions. Vico’s use of myth and custom as evidence for social life anticipates anthropological interpretation.
Common sense: Shared judgments and practical understandings that people in a community take for granted. Vico sees common sense as a basis for social institutions and collective life.
Three ages of Vico: Vico’s sequence of divine, heroic, and human ages in the development of nations. The sequence shows how institutions and forms of thought change together.