Giovanni Battista Vico (1688-1744), or Giambattista Vico, was born in Naples. His father, a bookseller, sent Vico to a local grammar school for early education. Eventually, Vico graduated from the University of Naples. According to Vita di Giambattista Vico, the autobiography of Vico, he was ‘the teacher of himself.’ This is a principle that would contribute to his success largely according to his autobiography. In his early life, he did not perform as a philosopher, but as a poet. However, his ideas are not only rich in poetry but could be studied carefully with his work The New Science, Le Orazioni Inaugurali [On Humanistic Education], and De Nostri temporis studiorum ratione [On the Study Methods of our Time].
During Vico’s period of history, early in the 18th century, the studies in History and Philosophy stubbornly set against each other—Historians cares about a single historical fact and seldomly conclude and generalize history as a whole in the field of Philosophy, while Philosophers focus on common facts and principles, and despise one sole historical event. Descartes and his rationalism push such a tendency to the limit, and Vico raised and set up the study of Philosophy of History with his strong rebellion to Descartes’s studies.
For the first time in history, Vico’s epoch-making contribution is to understand the meaning of history under his principle that humans could only understand things that are created by them. It is true that there are counterarguments for his principle, but his method of understanding history generalized all humanistic ideas from the development of the Renaissance, transformed historians’ ideas from God-based to human-based, and declared a new episode of philosophy of history.
Despite his general contribution to the history of philosophy, his impact is even larger for later Philosophers. Karl Max, Georg Wilhelm Hegel, Immanuel Kant, and many others, especially Classical German Philosophers, borrowed his idea of his way to view history.
Costelloe, Timothy, “Giambattista Vico”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2021 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2021/entries/vico/>.
Zhitu, Wuchi. “历史哲学之父维科: 人是历史的创造者.” Zhihu . Accessed March 27, 2021. https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/88492747.
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