Time and Idea [antikvár]

PREFACE TO PAPERBACK EDITION^ OME fifty years or more ago, Benedetto Croce, reviewing Wiudelband's now classical History of Philosophy, protested that in its pages no recognition of the work of Giambattista Vico was to be found. The admonition was effective. Windelband immediately recognized its justice and, in a new edition of the work, emended his text. Croce, in turn, responded to this mark of humility and concern for justice in a great colleague by dedicating to Windelband his own essay, Laflosofa di G. B. Vico (1911), a work which many rightly recognize as the watershed of modern Vichian studies. And thus another was added to the rich store of anecdote which graces the history of philosophy and touches it with humanity.What is remarkable about this anecdote, however, is that it ever could have taken place. From the contemporary point of view in the history of philosophy, it is inconceivable that such an omission, or even a slighting of the figure of Vico, should occur, and least of all in a work conceived and executed with such evident mastery and insight as Wiudelband's. Vico is now recognized as one of the cardinal figures in the development of Western philosophy, a thinker whose contribtition has permanently altered the entire perspective in which that development must be interpreted. To what, one is led inevitably to ask, is this radical alteration to be traced?The answer docs not seem far to seek. Vico is one of the great revolutionary figures of Western thought, and is to be ranked with the decade or so of spcctilative masters from whom the dynamism of Western philosophy flows. By his thoughts he permanently and radically altered Western man's basic vision of himself, hi doing so, he opened a fresh perspective upon reality itself in which all of the classical problems of philosophy exhibited themselves in a new light and demanded fresh consideration, hi what, we may ask, docs the essential, revolutionary vision of man, which Vico ushered in, reside?The answer may be given in a phrase: Vico is the author (in his own sense of the term anctor, originator) of the historical vision of man,ix