This book introduces the thought of Giambattista Vico (1668-1744) into the discussion about natural law. For many critics, natural law is not natural but a façade behind which lurks the supernatural - that is, revealed religion. While current notions of natural law are based on either Aristotelian/Thomistic principles or on Enlightenment rationalism, the book shows how Vico was the only natural law thinker to draw on the Roman legal tradition, rather than on Greek or Enlightenment philosophy. Specifically, the book addresses how Vico, drawing his inspiration from Roman history, incorporated both rhetoric and religion into a dynamic concept of natural law grounded in what he called the sensus communis: the entire repertoire of values, images, institutions, and even prejudices that a community takes for granted. Vico denied that natural law could ever furnish a definitive answer to moral problems in the social/public sphere. Rather he maintained that such problems had to be debated in the wider arena of the sensus communis. For Vico, as this book argues, natural law principles emerged from these debates; they did not resolve them.

This book introduces the thought of Giambattista Vico (1668-1744) into the discussion about natural law. For many critics, natural law is not natural but a façade behind which lurks the supernatural - that is, revealed religion. While current notions of natural law are based on either Aristotelian/Thomistic principles or on Enlightenment rationalism, the book shows how Vico was the only natural law thinker to draw on the Roman legal tradition, rather than on Greek or Enlightenment philosophy. Specifically, the book addresses how Vico, drawing his inspiration from Roman history, incorporated both rhetoric and religion into a dynamic concept of natural law grounded in what he called the sensus communis: the entire repertoire of values, images, institutions, and even prejudices that a community takes for granted. Vico denied that natural law could ever furnish a definitive answer to moral problems in the social/public sphere. Rather he maintained that such problems had to be debated in the wider arena of the sensus communis. For Vico, as this book argues, natural law principles emerged from these debates; they did not resolve them.

This book introduces the thought of Giambattista Vico (1668-1744) into the discussion about natural law. For many critics, natural law is not natural but a façade behind which lurks the supernatural – that is, revealed religion. While current notions of natural law are based on either Aristotelian/Thomistic principles or on Enlightenment rationalism, the book shows how Vico was the only natural law thinker to draw on the Roman legal tradition, rather than on Greek or Enlightenment philosophy. Specifically, the book addresses how Vico, drawing his inspiration from Roman history, incorporated both rhetoric and religion into a dynamic concept of natural law grounded in what he called the sensus communis: the entire repertoire of values, images, institutions, and even prejudices that a community takes for granted. Vico denied that natural law could ever furnish a definitive answer to moral problems in the social/public sphere. Rather he maintained that such problems had to be debated in the wider arena of the sensus communis. For Vico, as this book argues, natural law principles emerged from these debates; they did not resolve them.

A pioneering treatise that aroused great controversy when it was first published in 1725, Vico's New Science is acknowledged today to be one of the few works of authentic genius in the history of social theory. It represents the most ambitious attempt before Comte at comprehensive science of human society and the most profound analysis of the class struggle prior to Marx.

The concept sensus communis--a term that means a great deal more than its English translation "common sense"--has served as a key principle in the theory of knowledge from the ancient Greeks through the Enlightenment philosophers. John D. Schaeffer shows how the seventeenth-century Italian philosopher Giambattista Vico synthesized Greek and Roman ideas of what sensus communis and what this synthesis implies for current discussions of rhetoric and hermeneutics. Arguments for ethical relativism emerge from divisions between sensus communis as an ethical judgment (a concept that Richard Rorty, Richard Bernstein, and others have tried to rescue) and as a linguistic consensus, a division against which Vico argued and which his own concept of sensus communis attempted to reconcile. In extended commentaries on Gadamer, the Gadamer/Habermas debate, and Derrida, Schaeffer shows that Vico offers the possibility of analyzing social phenomena and constellations of power from within the humanist rhetorical tradition. Vico's achievements have powerful implications for relating ethics and hermeneutics to the world of concrete social practice, particularly in an age in which the electronic media have replaced print as the primary means of communication and in which a "secondary orality" (a cast of mind similar to that of nonliterate peoples) is appearing within our literate civilization.

Giambattista Vico: Keys to the "New Science" brings together in one volume translations, commentaries, and essays that illuminate the background of Giambattista Vico's major work. Thora llin Bayer and Donald Phillip Verene have collected a series of texts that help us to understand the progress of Vico's thinking, culminating in the definitive version of the New Science, which was published in 1744.Bayer and Verene provide useful introductions both to the collection as a whole and to the individual writings. What emerges is a clear picture of the decades-long process through which Vico elaborated his revolutionary theory of history and culture. Of particular interest are the first sketch of the new science from his earlier work, the Universal Law, and Vico's response to the false book notice regarding the first version of his New Science. The volume also includes additions to the 17 44 edition that Vico had written out but that do not appear in the English translations-including his brief chapter on the "Reprehension of the Metaphysics of Descartes, Spinoza, and Locke"-and a bibliography of all of Vico's writings that have appeared in English. Giambattista Vico: Keys to the "New Science" is a unique and vital companion for anyone reading or rereading this landmark of Western intellectual history.

Giambattista Vico (1668–1744) is best remembered for his major work, the New Science (Scienza nuova), in which he sets forth the principles of humanity and gives an account of the stages common to the development of all societies in their historical life. Controversial at the time of its publication in 1725, the New Science has come to be seen as the most ambitious attempt before Comte at a comprehensive science of human society and the most profound analysis of the philosophy of history prior to Hegel. Despite the fundamental importance of the New Science, there has been no philosophical commentary of the text in any language, until now. Written by the noted Vico scholar Donald Phillip Verene, this commentary can be read as an introduction to Vico’s thought or it can be employed as a guide to the comprehension of specific sections of the New Science. Following the structure of the text scrupulously, Verene offers a clear and direct discussion of the contents of each division of the New Science with close attention to the sources of Vico’s thought in Greek philosophy and in Roman jurisprudence. He also highlights the grounding of the New Science in Vico’s other works and the opposition of Vico’s views to those of the seventeenth-century natural-law theorists. The addition of an extensive glossary of Vico’s Italian terminology makes this an ideal companion to Vico’s masterpiece, ideal for both beginners and specialists.