Religious Dimension in the Thought of Giambattista Vico (1668-1744). Volume 1, the Early Metaphysics

In this two-volume work, the author argues that the avant-garde features of Giambattista Vico's thought stem directly from his engagement with theological traditions, and his concern to develop a Catholic apologetic. This claim is established through a much more thorough engagement with all Vico's texts than is usual in the secondary literature in English.

Volume 1 The Early Metaphysics deals with Vico's early writings, where he makes his fullest statements concerning humanist vision and Christian metaphysics. It focuses on Vico's baffling but intriguing outline of a metaphysics in the De Antiquissima Italorum Sapientia. Hints are given concerning the import of the metaphysics for the later writings, and it argues that Vico's thought represents an `alternative', theological modernism, at once more radical and more orthodox than the proposals of Kant and Hegel.