On Vico’s Historical Philosophy

Vico,was a famous Italian historian, philosopher,sociologist,jurist, and the founder ofmodern Western social science. The new science is his masterpiece and the content of thisbook is very rich,covering the history, philosophy, literature, ethics, linguistics, and enjoyingthe reputation of the "encyclopedia".In the "new science", in order to understand the origin and development of humanhistory correctly, Vico proposed to restore history with language, fables and myths, ancientartifacts to trace the historical origins and reproduce early human life style.Finally,make theunity of theme, doctrine, and language.Meanwhile, Vico showed the high respect to Bacon’sempiricism, emphasized the important role of emotional experience in understanding. Thenunify the experience and theory. His innovation about methodology paved the way for thedevelopment of the humanities.Vico is the first thinker proposed the view “man himself create the human world” inthe history of Western thought. This view gave a heavy blow to the Christian "Creation ofGod,", affirmed the status and role of people in history, laid the cornerstone of Westernhumanism in modern times. At the same time, Vico also emphasized that the development ofhuman history is not chaotic,but follow a law.It is an continuous evolution and developmentprocess from junior to senior. In the process of historical development and evolution, classstruggle plays an important role. A series of views of Vico,such as "Creation of Human" and"class struggle" and "historical development regularity" have a profound influence to theformation of Marxist materialism.