GIOVANNI BATTISTA, an Italian jurist, historian, and critic, was born at Naples in 1668. Robust and lively when a child, he met with an accident at the age of seven, from which he recovered, after a three years' illness, with a sickly constitution and a predisposition to melancholy, which he retained through life. He was educated by the Jesuits, under whom he distinguished himself as a pupil, and he afterwards studied law with the purpose of practising at the Neapolitan bar, but his feeble health prevented him from adhering to this resolution. He then accepted of an appointment as tutor in jurisprudence to the nephew of Rocco, bishop of Ischia, and in this situation he spent nine years of his life, devoting his ample leisure in the solitude of a great Italian library, to the study of law and theology, and to the careful perusal of the works of Plato, Bacon, and Descartes.

On his return to Naples, Vico married, and shortly afterwards obtained the chair of rhetoric, with the scanty salary of 100 scudi a year, which, however, he contrived to eke out by giving lessons in Latin. This situation he held for forty years, and it remained his chief source of emolument even when he had attained to the highest distinction as a scholar, and was constantly employed in preparing Latin inscriptions and discourses for the Spanish and Austrian viceroys of Naples.

The whole literary life of Vico was a preparation for one great work, which he had roughly forecast while studying theology, philosophy, and jurisprudence in the library of the Bishop of Ischia. In one of his earliest discourses he pointed out the common bond of the sciences, and alleged that the ancient were superior to the modern thinkers, for this reason, that the former studied all knowledge, human and divine, as a whole, while the latter, splitting it up into theology, philosophy, law, and the natural sciences, have devoted their attention to the exclusive study of one department, without considering that every science is so blended and entangled with all the others, that it is not to be understood as if isolated or disjoined from them. In Vico's time the discussions provoked by the writings of Descartes had not died out. The dogmatic part of the Cartesian philosophy had been abandoned, but the Cartesian method was still the subject of a controversial war. Vico entered the lists to defend the principles enunciated by Descartes, but at the same time to protest against the excessive application of the geometric method to the exclusion of authority or "common sense" as the criterion of truth. His next work was more important than any that had preceded it. It was entitled De antiquissima Italorum sapientia. Here he entered on new ground, showing that by the application of his doctrine of method and authority to the history of words, important light might be cast on the opinions of nations at a period antecedent to history. In 1719 the perusal of the great work of Grotius turned the attention of Vico more especially to jurisprudence. The result was a treatise De uno iuris universi principio, and another, De constantia jurisprudentiae. In these works the author showed the dependence of law upon political events, and again enforced the essential unity of theology, law, philosophy, mythology, and philosophical history.

Vico now undertook to recast his ideas, and concentrate them into one great work. Bacon had placed the natural sciences on a firm basis. Vico resolved to rescue history and jurisprudence from the domain of chance. He had discovered the laws which regulate social and political development; and as they had not previously been demonstrated, he gave to them the name of the new science, or Scienza Nuova, under which title his book was published. In this work he lays down the principle, that besides the idea of the material world, there existed in the divine intellect, previous to creation, an eternal idea of the history of mankind, and he endeavours to show that this idea is realized in the actual course of events, and that the development of religious creeds, languages, social institutions, and systems of law within certain epochs, affords stronger proof of the moral government of the world than any argument a priori can supply. The social world, he says, is the work of the predevelopment of the human faculties; and yet this world has issued from an intelligence which is often contrary, and always superior, to the particular ends which men have proposed to themselves. Divine providence is, in short, discernible through the whole course of history. Vico, in applying his general principles to facts and events, arrived at opinions concerning the history of language, the origin of society and social institutions, the Greek mythology, and the legendary character of the Homeric poems and early Roman history, which coincide in a striking manner with the results of modern criticism and research in comparative philology, mythology, and jurisprudence. Indeed, the sceptical criticism of Germany is anticipated so fully and distinctly by Vico, that Wolf and Niebuhr have been accused of borrowing their ideas from the Scienza Nuova. The particular researches of Vico, however, are so much mixed up with visionary and fanciful notions, with errors which, since his time, have been exploded by the results of patient criticism and the progress of comparative philology and the natural sciences, that they now possess no great historical or philosophical value. His great glory lies in the fact that it was he who first showed clearly that in the social and political history of the human race we meet with the strongest evidence of the existence of a Divine providence, and the highest manifestations of order, justice, and progress.

When Vico had published his Scienza Nuova, a load was off his mind. The task of his life had been brought to a conclusion: "Since I completed my great work," he says in 1726, "I feel that I have become a new man. I am no longer tempted to declaim against the bad taste of the age, because in denying me the place which I sought, it has given me time to compose my Scienza Nuova. Shall I say it? I perhaps deceive myself, although most unwilling to do so; the composition of that work has animated me with a heroic spirit, which places me above the fear of death and the calumnies of my rivals. I feel that I am seated upon a rock of adamant, when I think of that law of God which does justice to genius by the esteem of the wise."

In 1735 better days seemed in store for Vico with the accession of the Bourbons to the throne of Naples. He was appointed historiographer to the king, while his son took his place as professor of rhetoric. But hard study and domestic care and anxiety had impaired his mental powers, and he ultimately sank into a state of insensibility, in which he knew neither family nor friends, and in this helpless condition he died on the 20th January 1744.

The writings of Vico, after his death, fell into comparative neglect, and they remained almost unknown for nearly half a century. When Goethe visited Italy in 1787, he made the acquaintance of Filanghieri, who had just risen to distinction by his great work on legislation. The brilliant young Neapolitan talked of the subjects on which he had written, of his favourite authors Montesquieu and Beccaria, but above all of Vico, whom he never quoted without a burst of patriotic enthusiasm. Goethe, after a hurried perusal of the Scienza Nuova, which was lent to him as a sacred deposit, formed a high estimate of his merits. Preoccupied, however, with other subjects of inquiry, he did not speak of it with sufficient emphasis to bring it prominently under the notice of northern scholars. It was M. Ballanchi who first directed attention in France and Germany to the value of the philosophical notions expounded by Vico. Since this period his reputation has rapidly grown, and we are now accustomed to see him associated with Bacon, Spinoza, and Leibnitz, as one of the greatest and most original thinkers of modern times. In 1822, his works were exactly and literally translated into German by M. Weber, and published at Leipzig. In 1828, M. Michellet, suppressing a few passages, translated his writings into French, under the title of Principes de la Philosophie de l'Histoire, traduits de la Scienza Nuova de G. B. Vico. The best editions of the collected works of Vico are those published at Naples in 1818 and 1835 by the Marquis of Villa Rosa, and those published at Milan more recently by G. Ferrari, under the title of Opere di G. B. Vico ordinate ed illustrate da G. Ferrari, the second edition of which was published in 1854.