Keys to the "New Science" Translations, Commentaries, and Essays

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 Ilin 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 1744 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.

Thora Ilin Bayer is RosaMary Foundation Professor of Liberal Arts at Xavier University of Louisiana. She is the author of Cassirer's Metaphysics of Symbolic Forms: A Philosophical Commentary. Donald Phillip Verene is Charles Howard Candler Professor of Metaphysics and Moral Philosophy and Director of the Institute for Vico Studies at Emory University. His many books include Vico's Science of Imagination and The Art of Humane Education, both from Cornell.