The New Science - Giambattista Vico

Karl Marx

Ad vocem your book which I have of course now quite finished, and individual chapters reread, it strikes me that you apparently haven’t read Vico’s ‘new science’. Not that you'd have found anything in it immediately to your purpose; but it does provide a philosophical view of the spirit of Roman law, contrasting with that of the legal philistines. You would scarcely be able to work your way through the original, as it is not only written in Italian but in a very peculiar Neapolitan idiom. However, I commend the French translation, La Science nouvelle, etc.; traduite par 1'auteur de l'essai sur la formation du dogme catholique. Paris, Charpentier, Editeur — 1844. To whet your appetite, I shall do no more than quote the following sentences:

‘Ancient Roman law was a grave poem and ancient jurisprudence austere poetry which contained the first attempt to formulate legal metaphysics... ancient jurisprudence was highly poetical in that it supposed true those facts that were not so, and refused to admit the truth of facts that were so indeed; in that it regarded the living as dead, and the dead as living in their inheritance.’ ‘The Latins called heroes heri: whence comes the word hereditas ... the heir ... represents, vis-à-vis the inheritance, the deceased pater familias.’

Vico contains in embryo Wolf (Homer), Niebuhr (Römische Königsgeschichte), the fundamentals of comparative linguistics (even if in fanciful form) and a whole mass of really inspired stuff. So far, I have never been able to get hold of his legal writings proper.