Professor Pompa's study of Vico has done a great deal to stimulate and inform the growing interest in the English-speaking world in this remarkable figure. His monograph remains the only work devoted almost exclusively to an interpretation of the 'New Science' and offers a comprehensive guide to the main theoretical problems to which the text gives rise. For this second edition Professor Pompa has responded to the reactions of reviewers and critics and added a further chapter which analyses Vico's conception of the principles which govern the development of law.

The book should be of interest to a wide range of students and teachers in philosophy, history and social theory.