ABSTRACT
The earliest phase of Vico's theory of knowledge takes the form of direct criticism of and antithesis to Cartesianism which had guided European thought for more than half a century, and was to maintain its spirit for another hundred years. Mathematics no longer, as with Descartes, stands at the summit of human knowledge, an aristocratic science, destined to reclaim and to rule over the inferior sciences. The power of mathematics is met by obstacles both a parte ante and a parte post, in its foundations and in the superstructure which in its turn it is to support. Taken as a whole Vico's first theory of knowledge is neither intellectualistic, sensationalistic, nor truly speculative. God's knowledge is the complete sphere of knowledge, the unity of which man's is but a series of fragments. God knows all things because he contains in himself all the elements of which he makes them.
