New ScienceBarely acknowledged in his lifetime, the New Science of Giambattista Vico (1668-1744) is an astonishingly perceptive and ambitious attempt to decipher the history, mythology and laws of the ancient world. Discarding the Renaissance notion of the classical as an idealised model for the modern, it argues that the key to true understanding of the past lies in accepting that the customs and emotional lives of ancient Greeks and Romans, Egyptians, Jews and Babylonians were radically different from our own. Along the way, Vico explores a huge variety of topics, ranging from physics to poetics, money to monsters, and family structures to the Flood. Marking a crucial turning-point in humanist thinking, New Science has remained deeply influential since the dawn of Romanticism, inspiring the work of Karl Marx and even influencing the framework for Joyce's Finnegan's Wake. |
Contents
INTRODUCTION by Anthony Grafton | |
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE | |
ELEMENTS | |
PRINCIPLES | |
METHOD | |
PROLEGOMENA | |
POETIC METAPHYSICS | |
THE SEARCH FOR THE TRUE HOMER | |
DISCOVERY OF THE TRUE HOMER | |
INTRODUCTION | |
THREE KINDS OF GOVERNMENT | |
THREE KINDS OF JURISPRUDENCE | |
THREE KINDS OF REASON | |
THREE KINDS OF JUDGMENTS | |
THREE SCHOOLS OF THOUGHT | |
POETIC LOGIC | |
POETIC MORALITY | |
POETIC ECONOMICS OR HOUSEHOLD MANAGEMENT | |
POETIC POLITICS | |
EPITOMES OF POETIC HISTORY | |
POETIC COSMOGRAPHY | |
POETIC ASTRONOMY | |
POETIC GEOGRAPHY | |
SECTION 13 | |
FINAL PROOFS CONFIRMING THE COURSE OF NATIONS | |
THE RESURGENCE OF NATIONS AND THE RECURRENCE OF HUMAN | |
The Recurrence of the Invariable Nature of Fiefs and the Recurrence | |
Description of the Ancient and Modern Worlds in the Light of the | |
On the Eternal Natural Commonwealth Best in its Kind Ordained by Divine | |
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Common terms and phrases
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