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New Science: Principles of the New Science Concerning the Common Nature of Nations (Penguin Classics)
 
 
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New Science: Principles of the New Science Concerning the Common Nature of Nations (Penguin Classics) [Paperback]

Giambattista Vico (Author), Anthony Grafton (Introduction), David Marsh (Translator)
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Product details

  • Paperback: 560 pages
  • Publisher: Penguin Classics; 3rd Revised edition edition (29 April 1999)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0140435697
  • ISBN-13: 978-0140435696
  • Product Dimensions: 19.8 x 13.2 x 2.4 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 234,163 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Giambattista Vico
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Product Description

Product Description

Barely acknowledged in his lifetime, the New Science of Giambattista Vico (1668-1744) is an astonishingly perceptive and ambitious attempt to decipher the history, mythology and laws of the ancient world. Discarding the Renaissance notion of the classical as an idealised model for the modern, it argues that the key to true understanding of the past lies in accepting that the customs and emotional lives of ancient Greeks and Romans, Egyptians, Jews and Babylonians were radically different from our own. Along the way, Vico explores a huge variety of topics, ranging from physics to poetics, money to monsters, and family structures to the Flood. Marking a crucial turning-point in humanist thinking, New Science has remained deeply influential since the dawn of Romanticism, inspiring the work of Karl Marx and even influencing the framework for Joyce's Finnegan's Wake.

About the Author

Although Vico (1668-1744) lived his whole life as an obscure academic in Naples, his New Science is an astonishingly ambitious attempt to decode the history, mythology and law of the ancient world.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
22 of 24 people found the following review helpful
Poetic Wisdom 12 July 1999
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
This is a very unusual book. It is an unorthodox view of history that became the source of inspiration to a diverse group of scholars such as Karl Marx, James Joyce and Marshall McLuhan. It was my reading of McLuhan that caused me to seek out Vico, and therefore, read this book.

If you have an interest in words and entomology, this is a book for you. Vico looks for the origin of civilization in the origin of words, and proposes theories that provoke thoughtful reflection. McLuhan used Vico to chart the future of civilization, as did Joyce.

It is impossible to sum-up this book in a few words, and it is difficult to explain why it is worth reading, but nonetheless, I recommend it to those of you who have stumbled upon it here. If you've gotten to this page, of the 800 million pages in cyberspace, then you are probably someone who should read Vico.

If you've never read Vico before, I highly recommend his autobiography, which contains a scholarly overview of Vico and his thought. It is a slimmer volume than this one, and could help you decide to read-on.

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Amazon.com:  10 reviews
51 of 56 people found the following review helpful
Poetic Wisdom 12 July 1999
By "bpjammin" - Published on Amazon.com
Format:Paperback
This is a very unusual book. It is an unorthodox view of history that became the source of inspiration to a diverse group of scholars such as Karl Marx, James Joyce and Marshall McLuhan. It was my reading of McLuhan that caused me to seek out Vico, and therefore, read this book.

If you have an interest in words and entomology, this is a book for you. Vico looks for the origin of civilization in the origin of words, and proposes theories that provoke thoughtful reflection. McLuhan used Vico to chart the future of civilization, as did Joyce.

It is impossible to sum-up this book in a few words, and it is difficult to explain why it is worth reading, but nonetheless, I recommend it to those of you who have stumbled upon it here. If you've gotten to this page, of the 800 million pages in cyberspace, then you are probably someone who should read Vico.

If you've never read Vico before, I highly recommend his autobiography, which contains a scholarly overview of Vico and his thought. It is a slimmer volume than this one, and could help you decide to read-on.

21 of 23 people found the following review helpful
Often Overlooked Masterpiece 19 Dec 2002
By Mr. Egregious - Published on Amazon.com
Format:Paperback
Most people come to Vico for one of three reasons: historical perspective (fans of Spengler), philosophical curiosity (fans of Marx), or literary insight (fans of Joyce). Regardless of the motivation, the reader will be confronted with a highly unconventional text at first: the open of the book is an overlong explanation of the bookplate. Then we are faced with a collection of Nietzschian aphorisms. By the third part of the book, if the second part hasn't trigged an interest, the explication of parts 1 and 2 grab and take hold of the reader. The result? Once the reader finishes the book, the seemingly obtuse open seems perfectly reasonable for in the course of the text for Vico assimilates history, anthropology, philosophy, philology, and genealogy into a comprehensive whole which is perfectly symbolized by the bookplate. Though, at times, his premises seem rather far-fetched (Vico himself notes this), the intent of the work is rarely obscured. The only complaint? Perhaps Vico could have expanded the work more to make his attempted scope and range cohere better. But then, Frazier did this in a similar work (The Golden Bough) and we have 12 volumes to show for it!
28 of 32 people found the following review helpful
Masterpiece 4 April 2001
By A Customer - Published on Amazon.com
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
That Vico is largely unknown, even by the so-called experts teaching in our universitiues, while mediocrities and worse of the past half century are lauded and taught widely is yet another indication that our educational standards are dumbed down considerably. Vico is difficult to read, and we are increasingly an intellectually lazy people who prefer simplistic platitudes that sooth our postmodernist prejudices.

I give this Penguin edition only a 4 not because New Science is not itself a 5 or because the translation itself is weak, but because Vico requires copious notes. Most who read this work will do so on their own, and they need considerable help unless they are already as well read in the Classics and works of the Medieval and Renaissance eras as was Vico himself. Perhaps soon we will see an edition that meets that need, which also might encourage a few more to teach Vico, before we fall into the re-barbarism.

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