Full Name: Giambattista Vico
Nickname: Don't have a Nickname

Father Name: Unknown
Mother Name: Unknown
Wife: Teresa Destito

Date of Birth: 23 June 1668
Birth Place: Naples, Kingdom of Naples

Date of Death: 23 January 1744 (aged 75)
Death Place: Naples, Kingdom of Naples
Cause of Death: failing health

Gender: Male
Race or Ethnicity: White
Education: Society of Jesus, University of Naples
Occupation: Philosopher, Sociologist
Professor: University of Naples (1699-1741)
Nationality: Neapolitan

Notable Works: Principî di Scienza Nuova, De antiquissima, Italorum sapientia.

Influenced By: Plato, Cicero, Tacitus, St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, Dante, Machiavelli, Selden, Hobbes, Malebranche, Francis Bacon, Hugo Grotius, Leibniz, Herodotus.

Influenced: Maistre, Chateaubriand, Hegel, Coleridge, Karl Marx, Croce, Gramsci, James Joyce, Evola, Michelet, Quinet, Auerbach, McLuhan, Hillman, Frye, Castoriadis, Preve, Hösle, Voegelin.

Major Writings: The new science of Giambattista Vico (1725); The first new science; Keys to The new science; Vico; Statecraft; On the study methods of our time (1709); On the Ancient Wisdom of the Italians Unearthed From the Origins of the Latin Language (1710).

Italian political philosopher, rhetorician, historian and jurist Giambattista Vico (23 June 1668 - 23 January 1744) is considered as the founder of the philosophy of history. He is best known for his the Scienza Nuova of 1725 which was later published in English entitled, New Science. Vico did not achieve much fame during his lifetime or after. But a wide variety of important thinkers were influenced by Vico’s writings including Johann Gottfried von Herder, Karl Marx, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, James Joyce, Benedetto Croce, R. G. Collingwood and Max Horkheimer.

Early Life & Childhood: Giambattista Vico was born on 23 June 1668 in Naples, Kingdom of Naples (Italy). At the age of 7, he fell from the top of a ladder and seriously injured his head. He needed 3 years to recover from the injury. He attended a series of grammar schools, but ill-health and dissatisfaction with Jesuit scholasticism led to homeschooling. From 1686 to 1695, Vico worked as a tutor for the Rocca family in Vatolla. During this time, he studied Plato and poets such as Virgil, Dante and Petrarch.
Personal Life: Giambattista Vico's father was a bookseller but his name is still unknown. His family was poor and he was the sixth of eight children. In 1699, he married a childhood friend, Teresa Destito. The couple had three children.

Later Life & Death: In 1699, Giambattista Vico became a professor of rhetoric at the University of Naples. In 1709, he published his first major work On the Study Methods of Our Time which Dealt with humanistic education. In 1710, he published his work on metaphysics: On the Ancient Wisdom of the Italians Unearthed From the Origins of the Latin Language. From 1720 to 1722, he published his longest work in three volumes about low entitled Universal Law. In 1725, Vico published the first edition of his major work, New Science which 2nd edition published in 1730. In 1741, he resigned from the position of rhetoric at the University of Naples and his son Gennaro took his chair. Giambattista Vico died on 23 January 1744 at the of 75.