VICO has long been regarded as the greatest of Italian philosophers. Two centuries have passed since his death and the definitive edition of his major work, the Scienza nuova. Only small parts of that work, and a few passages quoted from his other writings, have so far appeared in English translation.
The first complete English version of any of his writings is that here offered of his autobiography, with which students of his thought have generally found it advisable to begin. Aside from the light it sheds on his other works, and the interest it has in common with every other intellectual autobiography, Vico’s has the unique interest of being the first application of the genetic method by an original thinker to his own writings.
Vico’s Italian bristles with difficulties even for Italians, and it is not likely that we have resolved them all. To preserve something of the flavor of the original, we have translated literally wherever a literal rendering seemed readily intelligible; but we have broken up most of his longer periods, and have resorted to paraphrase and bracketed insertions wherever we saw no other way to achieve clarity.
The text we have followed is that of the Laterza edition of Vico’s works, Volume V, Bari, 1929, edited by Croce and Nicolini; and many of the notes to our translation have been adapted from those in that edition, to which the reader is referred for further details.
The translation is a work of collaboration. For the introduction, notes and chronological table I alone am responsible. In Major Bergin’s absence overseas, the book has gone to press without the benefit of his proofreading.
G. H. Sabine made helpful comments on an early draft of the introduction. James Hutton shed light on some difficult passages in the translation. Giuseppe Cherubini listened to a reading of the translation with the original in hand and improved the rendering at several points.
If the introduction seems disproportionately long, that is because it is intended to serve also for the translation of the Scienza nuova which we hope shortly to publish.
M. H. F.
April 1944
For the second printing a few slight changes have been made in the introduction, and the translation has been extensively revised, with the help of Elio Gianturco and other friendly critics. To section IV E of the introduction there should now be added a reference to the penetrating, though admittedly one-sided, interpretation of Vico in Laurence Stapleton’s Justice and World Society.
M. H. F.
September 1944
For the Great Seal Rooks printing, a few further corrections have been made in the introduction and translation, and some supplementary notes have been added on pages 222–222B.
M. H. F.
T. G. B.
June 1962