Giambattista Vico and the Quarrel between the Ancients and the Moderns

Abstract

It was Benedetto Croce, one of Vico's best admirers, who remembered that when Nicola Capasso first opened the Scienza nuova, he fancied he had lost his wits and ... by a joke hurried off to his Doctor Cirillo, to have his pulse felt.1 We may still sympathize a little. For us, the problem of understanding Vico and placing him correctly in Western thought, awkward enough in itself, is compounded by the difficulty in establishing a useful context. Over and over we have heard it said that Vico was ahead