Vico's Corsi e Ricorsi

Also known as: Vichian Cycles

framework · history · philosophical-tradition

Giambattista Vico's cyclical theory of historical recurrence through ages of gods, heroes, and men, articulated in the New Science.

Vico's Corsi e Ricorsi (the 'courses and recourses' of history) is the cyclical theory of historical recurrence articulated by Neapolitan philosopher Giambattista Vico in his Scienza Nuova (New Science, first edition 1725, substantially revised second edition 1730 and third edition 1744). Vico proposed that human societies pass through three ages — the age of gods (theocratic, mythological, primitive-religious), the age of heroes (aristocratic, warrior-elite, feudal-like), and the age of men (democratic, rational, civilizational-mature) — followed by a return (ricorso) to a new cycle as societies decline through luxury and rationalist excess back into a new barbaric stage. The theory is integrated with Vico's broader philosophy of history claiming that human societies can be known with certainty only because humans made them (verum-factum principle), his treatment of poetic wisdom and mythology as historical evidence, and his critique of Cartesian rationalism. Vico had limited contemporary influence but was substantially rediscovered in the 19th century by Jules Michelet (French translation 1827) and subsequently by Croce, Joyce, Berlin, and historiographical commentators.

Originators

Giambattista Vico (1668-1744, Neapolitan philosopher); Scienza Nuova editions: 1725 (first), 1730 (second), 1744 (third and definitive); subsequent rediscovery and interpretive tradition: Jules Michelet (1827 French translation), Benedetto Croce (The Philosophy of Giambattista Vico 1911), James Joyce (Finnegans Wake structural use), Isaiah Berlin (Vico and Herder 1976) high

Year / Decade

1725 (first Scienza Nuova); 1744 (definitive third edition); 1827 onward (Michelet rediscovery and subsequent reception) high

Primary sources

Vico, G. (1725, 1730, 1744). Scienza Nuova / The New Science (three editions), Berlin, I. (1976). Vico and Herder: Two Studies in the History of Ideas, Croce, B. (1911). La filosofia di Giambattista Vico / The Philosophy of Giambattista Vico, Mazzotta, G. (1999). The New Map of the World: The Poetic Philosophy of Giambattista Vico high

Core components

Three ages of human society: age of gods (theocratic), age of heroes (aristocratic), age of men (democratic-rational)
Ricorso: return to a new cycle as societies decline through luxury and rationalist dissolution
Verum-factum principle: human societies can be certainly known because humans made them (in distinction to nature, knowable only to God)
Poetic wisdom (sapienza poetica): primitive mythological thought as form of cognition adequate to its historical moment
Universal history: Vico's claim that the three-age sequence applies to all peoples (with substantial empirical-classification difficulty)
Critique of Cartesian rationalism and history-as-progress narrative
Methodological commitment to recovering historical mentalities through language, mythology, and law
Connection to broader Neapolitan and Italian Renaissance political thought

Primary use case

Foundational text in the philosophy of history and history-of-historiography; academic reference in historiography curricula and graduate-level philosophy of history; intellectual antecedent for cyclical-history traditions including Spengler and (more loosely) Toynbee; literary-cultural reference through James Joyce's structural use of Vico in Finnegans Wake and broader modernist reception; subject of substantial scholarly interpretation in the philosophy of history (Croce, Berlin, Mazzotta, Lilla) and Italian Renaissance studies.

Common criticisms

Vico's substantive empirical claims have been substantially abandoned by mainstream historiography — the three-age sequence does not match the actual historical record of any society in detail, and the ricorso concept's application to specific historical periods produces wide interpretive disagreement among Vichians themselves
the universal-history scope is unsupportable by modern empirical-historical standards, with Vico's evidence base substantially limited to classical antiquity, biblical history, and limited early-modern European knowledge
the verum-factum principle and Vico's broader philosophical claims have been substantially debated within philosophy (Berlin's Vico and Herder 1976, Mazzotta's The New Map of the World 1999), with substantial disagreement about what Vico actually claimed and what implications follow
reception history has produced substantial interpretive traditions (Crocean idealist Vico, Berlin's pluralist Vico, postmodern Vico) that disagree fundamentally about the philosopher's commitments
cross-cultural reception is limited, with Vico's framework substantially Eurocentric in its empirical base
Vico's reception by 20th-century cyclical-history traditions (Spengler, Toynbee) was loose and the relationship is substantially debated
the work's idiosyncratic style and reliance on philological-etymological argument produces substantial accessibility difficulty that has limited scholarly engagement.

Lineage

Parent of: Spenglerian Cycles, Toynbee's Civilizations