Talk:Giambattista Vico

Neapolitan?

Vico a Neapolitan philosopher? As the most influential figure in the Italian philosophical tradition (more than Benedetto Croce, that's sure), calling him Neapolitan is a bit reductive. So Dante is a Florentine poet and Mussolini a Romagnolo politician, huh?--213.140.21.227 13:47, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

I love Vico, but surely Aquinas?

This is a question of definition. He was a Neapolitan subject, since Italy didn't exist and had never existed as a "country". That unity is an invention of the 1800's. It did exist as a geographical and more or less (less than we may think today) of a cultural and linguistic unity, but that was all. This should be reflected in the article, but the aspects that don't fit the present situation aren't, so the ordinary reader (even most who have some passive knowledge that it was unified only in 1871) will assume he was a product of Italy roughly as it is today.

And that's a typical problem on the Wikipedia, like it is in people's minds: anachronism is rampant. (The nonsense about different spellings of his name being different names, in a time without standardised spelling or name forms, which I edited somewhat the other day, is another example.) 151.177.62.193 (talk) 11:35, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

List of sources

Isn't there a more wikipedian standard way of doing the sources-lists? Just underlining them and putting them before the next paragraph doesn't seem to quite fit in with the rest of the site's layout... —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 129.240.183.133 (talk • contribs) 09:02, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

Moved from article (regarding picture)

The following was moved from the top of the article:

[[image:|right|]] N.B.--the posted image does not seem to be of G. B. Vico. (This is the only representation I've ever seen of a bald and bearded Vico.) Cf. the copy of Francesco Solimena's portrait of Vico commissioned by Villarosa, a reproduction of which serves as frontispiece for the Fisch & Bergin translation of "The Autobiography of Giambattista Vico" (Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univ. Pr., 1944).

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 84.48.194.162 (talk • contribs) 15:41, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

Quotations

The paragraph "Quotations" has been reverted because "Quotes go on Wikiquote". That's not how i imagined wikipedia : i prefer to have all informations on 1 author in 1 article. Why not. But then, the reference to wikiquote should be added (better by the one who made the revert) and all the authors' articles should be checked. Chrisdel 01:32, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Joyce

Perhaps James Joyce deserves more of a mention here? Vico is sort of the eminence grise of Finnegans Wake: the book's cyclical pattern was inspired by Vico, and he is more or less explicitly referenced at the end of the first sentence: "brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs." - Jmabel | Talk 07:15, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

I think Joyce was thinking of blending "Vico" with "vicious" as in a "vicious recirculation." Nothing is explicit in this book of extreme and intentional obscurity. Joyce was the anti–Tolstoy.Lestrade (talk) 00:04, 21 May 2011 (UTC)Lestrade

I would like to now add a link from Vico to Joyce's "Finnegan's Wake' under the 'See Also' section. eg: "See Also" - James Joyce, "Finnegan's Wake" - cyclical theory of history

The arguments above make sense; Joyce's latter work is challenging to categorise at all. I found recent analysis of Finnegan's Wake that explicitly brings Vico's 'cyclical theory of history' into relevant focus for Joyce's work:

Please consider this entry (below) that is copy-pasted from Wikipedia's 'Finnegan's Wake' link: --> Finnegans Wake- Allusions to other works -

--- "Allusions to other works---

"Finnegans Wake incorporates a high number of intertextual allusions and references to other texts; Parrinder refers to it as "a remarkable example of intertextuality" containing a "wealth of literary reference." Among the most prominent are the Irish ballad "Finnegan's Wake" from which the book takes its name, Italian philosopher Giovanni Battista Vico's La Scienza Nuova,...

"The book begins with one such allusion to Vico's New Science:

riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.

"Commodius vicus" refers to Giambattista Vico (1668–1744), who proposed a theory of cyclical history in his work "La Scienza Nuova" (The New Science). Vico argued that the world was coming to the end of the last of three ages, these being the age of gods, the age of heroes, and the age of humans. These ideas recur throughout Finnegans Wake, informing the book's four-part structure. Vico's name appears a number of times throughout the Wake, indicating the work's debt to his theories, such as "The Vico road goes round and round to meet where terms begin.” That a reference to Vico's cyclical theory of history is to be found in the opening sentence which is a continuation of the book's closing sentence – thus making the work cyclical in itself – creates the relevance of such an allusion..." --- Drakonicon | Talk 23:15, 7th February 2018 (UTC)

Also please note that two Joycean scholars, Samuel Beckett and Donald Philip Verne, both link Vico's cyclical theory of history to "structuring" Finnegans Wake:

"The opening line of the book is a sentence fragment which continues from the book's unfinished closing line, making the work a never-ending cycle.[9] Many noted Joycean scholars such as Samuel Beckett[10] and Donald Phillip Verene[11] link this cyclical structure to Giambattista Vico's seminal text La Scienza Nuova ("The New Science"), upon which they argue Finnegans Wake is structured." -- Finnegan's Wake -- quote is found second paragraph from the top of the article. --- Drakonicon | Talk 23:50, 7th February 2018 (UTC)

External links

The last link listed under "External links" is now dead, though it is archived at Archive.org. NBR 01:13, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Wow!!

This is REALLY bad. It's too bad I loath this anti-scientific, reationary philosopher so damned much, or I might fix it. I wonder how the Italian version is, but I don't expect much better.--Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 15:04, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

He may be anti-scientific and reactionary, but he's the greatest philosopher we've had, so let's be a bit more respectful... --213.140.21.227 13:49, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

The opening paragraph looks like it was written by a post-modernist on steroids. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 206.123.177.230 (talk) 17:33, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

Whats a reationary philosopher? (Billy Rubin, 2009) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.28.209.197 (talk) 19:24, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

A philosopher whose work is mostly concerned with responding to (usually negatively) other philosophers rather than creating and developing new ideas. Most academic philosophers, in other words ;D  Skomorokh  19:28, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Infobox

The infobox has been changed from a philosopher's to a writer's. Cited by the editor are that the writer's infobox is a better box, has a cleaner layout and there is space for notable works. I strongly disagree, but rather than to edit battle, I prefer to discuss it. If no discussion ensues, then I shall once again revert per WP:Preserve. The philosopher's infobox is much better, can be laid out just as cleanly as the writer's infobox, and the reason the "notable works" is not there is because there is presently an editing trend to decrease the size of infoboxes. Some wanted to add the "notable works" back in to the philosopher infobox, but consensus was to keep them out of the infobox and to mention the notable works in the article.
 —  ^{.`</sup>^) Paine Ellsworth<sup>diss`cuss} (^^`.  02:37, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

Constructivist Epistemology?

Please. Just stop. Not in the first paragraph. Will you people stop claiming everyone in history "anticipated" Constructivist Epistemology? I could go into the details as to why this is completely wrong, but this just has no place in an article about Vico. If you want to put it in your CE article, different story, but what an extremely small fringe group in the academy think about Vico should not be in the first paragraph. Vico is a philosopher of history. The only notable influence that would warrant a first paragraph mention is Joyce.

Russell

If Vico "inspired" Russell as claimed, how is it that there is no mention of him whatever in Russell's "History of Western Philosophy"? Perhaps whoever made this assertion would be kind enough to provide some supporting evidence.... Godingo (talk) 15:34, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

Russell's History of Western Philosophy is idiosyncratic and not to be taken too seriously. It was more of a vehicle for his personal opinions. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.72.63.45 (talk) 13:26, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

The article ends abruptly mid-sentence

The article seems to have been cut off before its conclusion. Perhaps this is an attempt to better relate Vico to Finnegans Wake, but I rather doubt it... CCPotter (talk) 14:30, 31 December 2010 (UTC)Chris Potter

apologist of classical antiquity?

I know that the meaning of the term 'apologist' here is in the sense of arguing in defence of something, but, for goodness sake, how is he defending 'classical antiquity'? Like, which bit? In Vico's writings (possibly influenced because he is from Naples, just up the road from Paestum and ancient Elea (Parmenides, Zeno etc and Calabria where Pythagoras had his school) he was focused on Demosthenes, Polybius, Seneca, Plato, Socrates, Virgil, Thucydides, Livy and several others, this wide expanse of historians, poets, philosophers, taxonomisers etc, because he was a philosopher of history and of rhetoric for the most part. Can someone explain what it means for him to be an apologist of 'classical antiquity'? Also, and I say this in response to a query above, just because Vico himself doesn't use the term 'philosophy of history' doesn't mean that his work, ideas and method didn't inspire and contribute to that field. Hugely in fact.

93.45.239.60 (talk) 11:47, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

93.45.239.60 (talk) 11:44, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Conservatism

Vico's name was added to a sidebar for "Conservatism" in Nov 2016, with no rationale given for the addition. I saw no new reference, and there's nothing in the article identifying him as a Conservative. The edit has been reverted. Tapered (talk) 09:24, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

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