G. B. Vico: The Making of an Anti-Modern [Hardcover]

Mark Lilla (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1993

The Italian scholar Giovanni Battista Vico is viewed as the first modern philosopher of history, a judgement largely based on his obscure 1744 masterpiece, "New Science". In this study Mark Lilla complicates this picture by presenting Vico as one of the most troubling of anti-modern thinkers. By combing Vico's neglected early writings on metaphysics and jurisprudence, Lilla reveals the philosopher's deep reservations about the modern outlook and shows how his science of history grew out of these very doubts. In works such as the untranslated "Universal Right (1720-1722)", a treatise on natural law, Vico emerges as a profoundly political and theological thinker who contrasted the authoritative traditions of an idealized Rome against the corrupting scepticism endemic in modern life. Vico explicitly blamed this scepticism on the founders of modern philosophy, particularly Descartes. Placed in the context of his critique of scepticism, Vico's "new science" of history appears in a wholly new light. Though modern in form, it can be seen here for what it was: a pessimistic vindication of divine authority directed agaist the freedom and reason that characterize the modern age. This introduction to Vico puts all the elements of his theories of authority, politics, and civil religion in their proper relationship with his theory of history. As such, it raises questions about the subsequent intellectual development of the anti-modern tradition as it relates to the historical and social sciences of our time.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Giambattista Vico (1668-1744) has long been claimed as a putative father of modern theoretical movements both in philosophy and political science. In this analysis of his subject's full corpus, Lilla (politics, NYU) cogently demonstrates that Vico was a "profound critic of the modern age" who used the newly emerging language of science to argue for the ascendancy of order and authority (a la the Romans) over the intellectual enlightenment promised by the rediscovery of classical Greece. While the current study is addressed to English-language readers who may not be very familiar with all of Vico's theory and writings, the audience for this book must necessarily be acquainted with Enlightenment history and theory. It is thus appropriate for academic collections and graduate students.
- Francisca Goldsmith, Berkeley P.L., Cal.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Harvard University Press; First Edition edition (April 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0674339622
• ISBN-13: 978-0674339620
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,179,048 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Mark Lilla was born in Detroit, Michigan in 1956. After briefly attending Wayne State University Lilla graduated from the University of Michigan in 1978 with a degree in economics and political science. While attending the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, he began writing journalism, and after graduating in 1980 became an editor of the public policy quarterly The Public Interest, where he remained until 1984. Returning to Harvard, he worked with sociologist Daniel Bell and political theorists Judith Shklar and Harvey Mansfield, receiving his PhD in Government in 1990.

Lilla is a frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books, the New Republic, and the New York Times, but is best known for his books The Reckless Mind: Intellectuals in Politics and The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics, and the Modern West. After holding professorships at New York University and the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago, he joined Columbia University in 2007 as Professor of the Humanities. He lectures widely and has delivered the Weizmann Memorial Lecture in Israel and the Carlyle Lectures at Oxford University.