Giambattista Vico: Keys to the "New Science"

"This is a fine and comprehensive summary of a controversial and many-faceted thinker. It draws upon Vico's lesser known writings in his long and complex pilgrimage from humanist philology through jurisprudence and Homeric poetry to philosophy. This includes not only the crucial published work on universal law but also a manuscript fragment relating to it, Vico's reply to the early review of his 'new science,' additions to the second edition of work, his late conception of the classical muses, his 'tree of knowledge,' and his critique of Descartes, Spinoza, and Locke. All of these, not always available in the existing English translations, come with important and valuable interpretation, commentary, and a review of Vico's metaphysics. A complete bibliography of English-language translations of Vico's writings is appended. Vico's work is seldom, if ever, seen historically and as a whole. This work is much more significant than the numerous speculative interpretations that place him in fanciful contexts, and it is essential to a correct and comprehensive view of the scholar who was at once one of the last of the humanists and one of the first practitioners and theoreticians of the modern human sciences." -- Donald R. Kelley, James Westfall Thompson Professor of History Emeritus, Rutgers University, and former Executive Editor, Journal of the History of Ideas