Neapolitan philosopher who wrote the New Science — arguing against Descartes's rationalism that humans can only truly know what they have made, that history follows cyclical patterns (corsi e ricorsi) from divine through heroic to human ages, and that myth and language are primary vehicles of historical truth.
Founded the philosophy of history as a distinct discipline — Vico's argument that civilizations pass through recurring stages (divine, heroic, human) and that each stage has its characteristic institutions, language, and psychology anticipated structural anthropology, hermeneutics, and the cyclical macrohistory of Toynbee and Spengler.
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