This comprehensive introduction to the philosophy of Giovanni Battista 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 provocative questions about the subsequent intellectual development of the anti-modern tradition as it relates to the historical and social sciences of our time.
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.
