ABSTRACT
The problem of the state is central to the concern of the 'New Science', of course, because of the continuity of Giambattista Vico's thought with classical political humanism. Vichian theory of the state takes its point of departure in the critique of an historical proposition which, Vico feels, has been expressed with special force and influence by Jean Bodin. The fallacy of theory is the conclusion that polity must and could have arisen only by force or fraud—a conclusion fraught with dogmatic anarchism. The first polity as thus depicted by Vico presents the aspect above all of a compact of privilege. In fact, however, he understands it to be much more. It harbours the first form of equity, civil equity, which finds political expression in the 'reason of state'. Civil equity and natural equity, with their corresponding political expressions, define for Vico the ideal terms of the historical movement of polity.
