«Merge Record #»«Title» - Schulz-Falster Rare Books

VICO, Giambattista. Principj di Scienza Nuova … d'Intorno alla
Comune Natura delle Nazioni in questa terza impressione dal
medesimo Autore in un gran numero di luoghi Corretta, Schiarita, e
notabilment Accresciuta.Tomo I [-Tomo II]. Naples, Stamperia
Muziana, 1744. £ 3800
Two volumes bound in one, 8vo, pp. [ii] frontispiece portrait, [xvi], [ii]
allegoric engraved frontispiece, 376, one folding printed table bound in;
[377]-526 [vere 516], [4] index; engraved title vignette; a few signatures
lightly browned, due to paper stock, and faint marginal damp-stain to
first signature; contemporary paste-paper covered boards, spine label
lettered in manuscript; corners a little bumped, but in all a very good
copy.
Third and definitive edition of Vico's masterpiece, which had originally been
published in 1725, rewritten for the second edition (1730), and further extensively
revised for this one. Ahead of his time, Vico was neglected during his life and
forgotten for years after his death, but his Scienza Nuova laid the foundations for
many of the most important intellectual developments of the following two
centuries. It was in this definitive edition, published in the year of Vico's death, that
his ideas became known.
The Principi di una Scienza Nuova has been justly called 'the vehicle by which the
concept of historical development at last entered the thought of western Europe'
(PMM 184). It remains one of the most influential treatises in the history of ideas. The
concept of a history of human ideas, the principles of a universal history and its
philosophical criticism, a recognition of the importance of social classes all begin
with Vico. Vico was the first to formulate a systematic method for historical
research. He revived the Greek conception that the course of history was subject to
cyclical phases (corsi e ricorsi). This however did not indicate an upward or forward
move towards perfection: according to Vico there exists in history a pattern which
repeats itself in each civilisation, a storia ideale eterna. Just as the individual man
passes through successive states, so does the history of civilisation.
Vico recognised the importance of myth, tradition, and language for our
understanding of primitive people. His was the first comprehensive study of human
society before Comte, and he presented the first detailed analysis of the class struggle
prior to Marx. Vico's concept of recurring patterns or cycles in history greatly
influenced Joyce whose cyclical novel Finnegans Wake presents an elaborate history
of mankind. In an obvious acknowledgement, Joyce even named the stage manager
of his panorama John Baptister Vickar, and Samuel Beckett's seminal essay on Joyce,
published in 1929, was entitled 'Dante ... Bruno . Vico .. Joyce'.
Vico founded no school and though his book was well-known in Italy during his
lifetime, his achievement met with little success and understanding until the
nineteenth century, when the German Romantics turned to his ideas. Herder,
Goethe, Hegel and later Spengler took up his contributions to historical philosophy
and method, and through them he greatly influenced modern historical and
sociological research, though often unacknowledged. Sir Herbert Read sums this up