Abstract

It may be an exaggeration to claim the twentieth century as Vico's, but the present volume attests that Vico's thought "is alive and doing well." Thirty-nine scholars from Italy, England, France, Germany, the United States, and Australia submitted original essays for the occasion, and the editor furnished not only an essay, but also a preface and an epilogue. The essays are divided into four groups: Comparative Historical Studies; Vico's Influence on Western Thought and Letters; Vico and Contemporary Social and Humanist Thinking; Vico and Modern Philosophy, Pedagogy, and Aesthetics. With a few notable exceptions, the main effort is to show the pervasive influence of Vichian concepts in the modern world. If this does not always come off, there remains the striking parallelism of Vico's thinking with modern streams in such varied fields of the social sciences as philosophy of history, linguistics, epistemology, phenomenology, existentialism, Gestalt psychology, sociology, cultural, philosophical, and structural anthropology, and, of course, the anti-Cartesian stance of much of contemporary philosophy. Space does not permit the listing of the individual contributors and the titles of their essays. Suffice it say that they constitute a useful beginning for the interpretation of modern thought in terms of Vichian origins and for the reinterpretation of Vico's thought in terms of contemporary extensions of basically similar views. The volume also contains a four-and-a-half page bibliography of works on Vico in English. Regrettably, there is no listing of translations into English of Vico's own works. Even more regrettable is the omission of works on Vico in any other language--a sad capitulation to the provincialism and chauvinism which sometimes passes as American scholarship.--H. B.