Giambattista Vico Quotes

Giambattista Vico — Italian Philosopher born on June 23, 1668, died on January 23, 1744

Giovan Battista Vico was an Italian political philosopher, rhetorician, historian, and jurist, who is recognized as one of the greatest Enlightenment thinkers. He criticized the expansion and development of modern rationalism and was an apologist of classical antiquity. Vico is best known for his magnum opus, the Scienza Nuova of 1725, often published in English as New Science... (wikipedia)

The universal principle of etymology in all languages: words are carried over from bodies and from the properties of bodies to express the things of the mind and spirit. The order of ideas must follow the order of things.

The nature of peoples is first crude, then severe, then benign, then delicate, finally dissolute.

Uniform ideas originating among entire peoples unknown to each other must have a common ground of truth.

Common sense is judgment without reflection, shared by an entire class, an entire nation, or the entire human race.

It is true that men themselves made this world of nations... but this world without doubt has issued from a mind often diverse, at times quite contrary, and always superior to the particular ends that men had proposed to themselves.

Giambattista Vico Quotes

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