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

Author: 
Year:
Pages:364
ISBN:0-7734-9694-7
978-0-7734-9694-1
Price:$239.95
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.

Reviews

"Milbank's subsequent discussion of Vico's legal thinking is the most comprehensive available in English. . . . Milbank offers powerful arguments that Vico's ideas about the relation of law and culture are religiously determined. In addition, he probes Vico's use of Roman law more deeply than others who have written on this subject. For scholars interested in Vico's legal thinking this section of Milbank's book will certainly be the richest." - New Vico Studies