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Napoli, Musca, 1720 & 1721. 4to. Bound together in one contemporary full vellum bindingwith old, faded title in ink to spine. A vertical crack to the spine, but binding fine and tight. A bit of wear to extremities. A bit soiled, but all in all good and completeley unrestored. Some quires quite browned and some quires with brownspotting. Book-plate to inside of front board (LA Law Library) and contemporary owner's signature to title-page (De Marinis). Some contemporary underlinings and marginal pointers to the first leaves. First title printed in red and black. (4), 195, (1) pp. + (4), 260 pp. The exceedingly scarce first edition of what is arguably Vico's magnum opus, his great work on law, which is now generally accepted as the first version of his New Science, due to which Vico is now considered one of the most important philosophers of all times. The work consists in the two books known as "De Uno" and "De Constantia" that were published separately in 1720 and 1721 respectively. They are almost always bound together and we know that all copies of that Vico gave away contain both works. Having finished his magnum opus, he couldn't put it away and began making extensive notes and revisions - evident from the extremely annotated copy that he himself had, where not a single margin was left blank. These annotations were later published as his "Notae" and sometimes accompany the first two books to make up what is known as the "Diritto Universale" (or "Universal Right"). . It is in this magnificent work of law - these two books that constitute the most comprehensive work that Vico ever wrote - that the thoughts that lie at the heart of Vico's philosophy are formulated for the first time. "The new Science" is an extension of that invented in his "De Constantia", and it is here that we find for the first time Vico's philosophy of history. It is thus in the present work, not in the "New Science" as often thought, that we find the groundbreaking interpretation of history as the product of the actions of men - the "Verum-factum"-identity, which is at the core of not only the "New Science", but of all his later thought. Though most scholars today agree that the present work is the most important of all of Vico's work, outshadowing even "The New Science", the work has been neglected and overlooked for decades. In many ways, the reason for this could be found with Croce and his work on Vico from 1923. "Croce minimized Vico's contributions in the domain of the philosophy of law. Gianturco is firmly convinced that the most certain result of the Crocean monograph on Vico was to direct on the "New Science" such a dazzling light and to make of it such a seducing, glowing star as to establish it in the center of the firmament of Vichian research. Thus, the "New Science" eclipses the extraordinary achievements in the juridical sphere that are found in the "De Uno". As Gianturco began to develop his thesis with arguments derived from the history of juridical thought, he advises readers to free themselves of this kind of favoritism for the "New Science" and to clear the eyes of their mind of the blindness that does not allow them to see where other, perhaps even greater, merits of Vico are to be found. It is necessary for us to perform a kind of "Copernican" turning, a reorientation of our categories. It is necessary to assume that the North Star of our research, the cynosure of our attention, is no longer the "Scienza nuova", but "Diritto universale. (From the preface to the English translation of Vico's "Universal Right", Pinton & Diehl, edt., p. xlv).And this is a notion backed by virtually all modern Vico-scholars - the "De Uno" and the "De Constantia" (together "Diritto Universale") are considered absolutely central in Vico's philosophy and as the starting point of all of his unique and monumental ideas. "Michael Mooney, from the beginning of his work of 1985 on Vico's rhetoric, points out the correlation that exists between "Institutiones Or. Seller Inventory # 55807
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