Vico and the Maker's Knowledge Tradition
Praxis and History

Argues that Vico envisioned a non-Cartesian version of modernity, where praxis, rather than reason, drives human history.

Maurizio Esposito (Author)

9781009436021, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 17 July 2025

276 pages
23.6 x 16.1 x 2.1 cm, 0.55 kg

Published in 1710, Giambattista Vico's groundbreaking On the Most Ancient Wisdom of the Italians argued, against Descartes, that knowledge is more about making and producing than speculating and theorising. Historicised activities precede any kind of ethereal abstraction. Maurizio Esposito situates Vico's epistemology of praxis within the longstanding tradition of the maker's knowledge perspective and shows how Vico transformed the ancient idea that knowledge is a form of making into a humanist and existential principle. Humans do not merely fabricate tools and transform nature; they also create symbolic spaces in which different forms of thinking and understanding evolve. Esposito explores the possibility that Vico envisioned a non-Cartesian version of modernity, where praxis, rather than reason, drives human history. This alternative modernity has directly or indirectly influenced some of the most significant philosophical traditions of the past two centuries and is more relevant today than ever.

Introduction: the 'maker's knowledge tradition' through and beyond Vico
1. Maker's knowledge traditions between ancients and moderns
2. Vico and the making of 'Praxis epistemology'
3. After and beyond Vico
4. Praxis epistemology I: from Vico to Marxism
5. Praxis epistemology II: from Vico to pragmatism
6. Praxis epistemology III: from vico to phenomenology
Conclusion: Technē and Physis, again
Appendix: two challenges to the verum/factum principle
References
Index.

Subject Areas: Western philosophy: c 1600 to c 1900 [HPCD]