ABSTRACT
The Vichian concept of providence, like the speculative or philosophical problem of history itself, appears first in the context of the theoretical problems of jurisprudence. In this initial context of jurisprudence the concept of providence labours under one grave limitation. While the providence of Roman jurisprudence indeed governs the emergence of the idea through temporal process, it does so without explicit reference to the contradiction which characterizes that process. Giambattista Vico develops this insight concretely in two contexts, both exceedingly delicate in the emotional reverberations which they arouse, but both, at the same time, vital to his entire theory. The first of these contexts is religious, the other political. Religion is, for Vico, the unshakable basis of human society. The transformation in the quality of his thought and doctrine affected by the total immanentization of the principle of providence and by its identification with the rationality of history is equally radical.
