The Study On The Philosophy Of History In Vico's "the New Science"

The person proposed the phrase "the Philosophy of History" at the earliest stage is the famous French thinker of 18th century Voltaire. But the Italian philosopher Ciam Battista Vico (1668-1744) is the people who combine history with philosophy on the real meaning. Vico made pertinent treatise on the various problems related to the philosophy of history from person's angle for the first time. So he has been called as "the Father of the Historical Philosophy". However, due to the limitation of understanding angle, the scholars haven't got sufficiently all-round and profound understanding to Vico's Philosophy of History thought.This paper aims at combing Vico's Philosophy of History established in his representative work "The New Science" from the two aspects: the Historical Ontology and the Historical Epistemology and Methodology. We try to surmount the problem that if Max had directly absorbed the ideas of Vico Philosophy of History .We have discovered some ideas with materialism character and limitations of Vico's Philosophy of History, based on the comparison to the relevant points of Vico's Philosophy of History and Marxist Historical Materialism. So we can make a more comprehensive and objective evaluation that Vico is the founder of Western Philosophy of History.This text is divided into three parts:Part I: From "The New Science", we can sum up Vico's Historical Ontology theory. It includes: He admitted and revealed the law of the historical development as well as its foundation; He regarded the all-round development of humanity and the realization of "God's Wishes" as the objectives of the development of history; under the external view of historical cycle, he expressed that spiral progress for rising was the trend of history. In Vico's opinion, individual private interest was the direct driving force of the historical development; "God's Wishes" was the original driving force of historical development. The class struggle was the motive force displaying in historical development.Part Il: The Historical Epistemology and Historical Methodology reflected in "The New Science" mainly displays in: Vico demonstrated the Philosophy of History by affirming men are the creators of history and proposing the Epistemology that the creation is the truth; Vico's Historical Methodology is reflected in his understanding to historical perspective, comprehensive description method, the main basis for the understanding of history.Part III: By contrasting between Vico's Philosophy of History and Marxist Historical Materialism on the two's logical starting points, the understanding of man-made history, the explanation to historical fundamental difficult problem, the understanding to the power, the process and the goal of the development of human history, the understanding to the historical epistemology, etc. We can find the "glittering" and limitations of Vico's Philosophy of History.