Giambattista Vico and the Foundations of Historical Reason
The Verum-Factum Principle and its Theological-Hermeneutical System
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 19218248 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Adnan Akan (0000-0003-1716-1137, Kocaeli Üniversitesi, corresponding author), Güvenç Şar (0000-0003-0947-5793, Kocaeli Üniversitesi) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Pages | 1-20 |
| Publication date | 2026-04-22 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | History of European Ideas (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0191-6599 • E-ISSN: 1873-541X |
| Publisher | Routledge (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/01916599.2026.2662905 |
| OpenAlex | W7155201213 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 11 |
This article reconstructs Giambattista Vico’s verum–factum principle by situating it within the early modern problem-space of epistemic authority and by tracing its internal development across Vico’s corpus. It argues that verum–factum becomes fully operative only when coordinated with Vico’s ‘rational civil theology of divine providence,’ forming an integrated architecture across three interdependent axes: theological (God as creator-knower and horizon of truth), anthropological (finite human knowing as realized through human making), and hermeneutical (providence as an immanent rationality that renders the civil world intelligible). Distinguishing the epistemic–metaphysical formulation of verum–factum in De antiquissima from its methodological deployment in the Scienza Nuova, the article shows, through close reading of Vico’s philological, juridical, and rhetorical procedures, how providence functions not as an external miracle-cause but as an operator of historical intelligibility. Finally, it clarifies the paper’s contribution to debates on the genealogy of understanding by framing Vico’s relation to later historicism and hermeneutics as a controlled, mediated, retrospective affinity rather than as direct transmission
Argument (complex analysis) · Criticism · Exposition (narrative) · Interpretation (philosophy) · Giambattista Vico and Joyce · Historical Art and Culture Studies · Historical Philosophy and Science
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |