«Preface» and «The genius of Vico» taken from «The mind of Vico»

Abstract

A text of great philosophical beauty and insightful perspective on the thinker Vico (the “genius”) and his work (the “system”), the Preface to The Mind of Giambattista Vico (1837) offers this conjunction as a rational-vital and rational-historical process. Giuseppe Ferrari, one of the main editors of Vico’s works, also stands out as an ingenious civil and historical philosopher: a man of his century committed to the progress of knowledge and humanity. Summarized by Ferrari himself: “There is a spectacle much more interesting than seeing criticism tearing apart errors that no longer exist, and that is the spectacle of the progress of science which, on the great path of history, goes on to discover what a century earlier had already been discovered by an isolated genius.” Text translation and presentation by José M. Sevilla Fernández, who is also in charge of the translation of Chapter VIII of Part II, entitled “Il genio di Vico” (The Genius of Vico). Both texts outline the meaning of Ferrari’s essay and the philosophical-historical portrait that this author paints of Vico.