Giambattista Vico
Giambattista Vico
Giovan BattistaVicowas an Italian political philosopher, rhetorician, historian, and jurist, who is recognized as one of the greatest Enlightenment thinkers. He criticized the expansion and development of modern rationalism and was an apologist of classical antiquity. Vico is best known for his magnum opus, the Scienza Nuova of 1725, often published in English as New Science...
NationalityItalian
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth23 June 1668
CountryItaly
twists lines straight-lines
The straight line cannot proceed through the torturous twists of life.
mind poetic plunge
Metaphysics abstracts the mind from the senses, and the poetic faculty must submerge the whole mind in the senses. Metaphysics soars up to universals, and the poetic faculty must plunge deep into particulars.
wise political study
Political Science carries inseparably with it the study of piety, and that he who is not pious cannot be truly wise.
ideas mind doe
The criterion and rule of the true is to have made it. Accordingly, our clear and distinct idea of the mind cannot be a criterion of the mind itself, still less of other truths. For while the mind perceives itself, it does not make itself.