Vico, rhetorical humanism, and the study methods of our time

Abstract

Through his philosophical concern for the development of an appropriately humane scientific mode of investigating the verbal, intellectual, and affective development of man, as well as through his anti‐Cartesian criticism of mathematical scien‐tism, Giambattista Vico provides various historical, philological, and rhetorical means of inquiry which lend insight into similar epistemological questions and methodological tensions apparent in humanistic and scientific approaches to the theoretical study of rhetoric today.