Abstract

It is an interesting fact that the twentieth century "recovery" of Giambattista Vico's Scienza Nuova, which began with Benedetto Croce's interpretation, has so far underemphasized the importance of Vico for political theory. This dissertation begins with the assumption that Vico may be understood as a political theorist and attempts to ascertain what are Vico's contributions to the field. ;Primarily a reading of the New Science, this work investigates the basic theoretical principles upon which Vico's ideas depend. With reference to the intellectual and historical contexts in which Vico produced, it draws out the possibility of a theory of tolerance based upon principles of "modesty" and "integration." After this, an interpretation of Vico's "political attitudes," as they are presented in the New Science and other works, is offered as a preliminary indication of Vico's political theory. ;The major part of the dissertation consists of an investigation of the implications of Vico's ideas on "science" and history. With particular reference to his De nostri temporis studiorum ratione and De antiquissima sapientia italorum, the implications of Vico's epistemology for the idea of a "new way of knowing" are drawn out. Similarly, the implications of Vico's "ideal eternal history" are discussed as the basis for plausible political actions. I find that, in their application to intellectual and cultural subjects, Vico's ideas about "social science" and history reflect the principles of modesty and integration. The resulting combination may be described as a theory of tolerance. ;This theory of tolerance is significant to our understanding of Vico because it relates him directly to political issues which remain important today. I conclude that Vico's theory of tolerance is significant because it is political and cultural more than it is religious and because it contains its own limitations. With Vico, the idea of tolerance does not extend to all political phenomena. His theory thus avoids the problems of relativism.