On the Most Ancient Wisdom of the Italians

The late L. M. Palmer was Professor of Philosophy at the University of Delaware.

This work gives significant insight into the early thoughts of one of the first truly modern thinkers in Western intellectual tradition. Palmer's excellent introduction illustrates its historical significance by placing it in a wider context.(Library Journal) Until now, the Latin treatise in which Vico first set forth his theory of knowledge and of metaphysics, On the Most Ancient Wisdom of the Italians, has never had a complete rendering into English. Lucia Palmer in this volume has provided a welcome translation not only of the treatise, but also of a series of exchanges concerning it (1711–12) between Vico and the Giornale de' letterati d'Italia. It contains the fullest statement of Vico's principle that the true and the made are interchangeable.(Seventeenth-Century News)