Giambattista Vico criticized the expansion and development of modern rationalism, finding Cartesian analysis and other types of reductionism impractical to human life, and he was an apologist for classical antiquity and the Renaissance humanities, in addition to being the first expositor of the fundamentals of social science and of semiotics.
13 Facts About Giambattista Vico
2.
Giambattista Vico is recognised as one of the first Counter-Enlightenment figures in history.
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The Latin aphorism Verum esse ipsum factum coined by Vico is an early instance of constructivist epistemology.
4.
Evidence from his autobiographical work indicates that Giambattista Vico likely was an autodidact educated under paternal influence, during a three-year absence from school, consequence of an accidental fall when the boy was seven years old.
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Four years later, in 1699, Giambattista Vico married Teresa Caterina Destito, a childhood friend, and accepted a chair in rhetoric at the University of Naples, which he held until ill-health retirement, in 1741.
6.
Giambattista Vico's version of rhetoric is a product of his humanistic and pedagogic concerns.
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In lectures and throughout the body of his work, Giambattista Vico's rhetoric begins from a central argument, which is to be clarified by following the order of things as they arise in our experience.
8.
Giambattista Vico would call for a maieutic oratory art against the grain of the modern privilege of the dogmatic form of reason, in what he called the "geometrical method" of Rene Descartes and the logicians at the Port-Royal-des-Champs abbey.
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Giambattista Vico is best known for his verum factum principle, first formulated in 1710 as part of his De antiquissima Italorum sapientia, ex linguae latinae originibus eruenda.
10.
In Capital: Critique of Political Economy, Karl Marx's mention of Giambattista Vico indicates their parallel perspectives about history, the role of historical actors, and an historical method of narrative.
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Marx and Giambattista Vico saw social-class warfare as the means by which men achieve the end of equal rights; Giambattista Vico called that time the "Age of Men".
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Marx concluded that such a state of affairs is the optimal end of social change in a society, but Giambattista Vico thought that such complete equality of rights would lead to socio-political chaos and the consequent collapse of society.
13.
In that vein, Giambattista Vico proposed a social need for religion, for a supernatural divine providence to keep order in human society.