ABSTRACT
This chapter compares Juan Luis Vives’ and Giambattista Vico’s thought on humanist education and law. Vives, a pupil of Desiderius Erasmus, is an important early example of a scholar dedicated to promoting the humanities as essential to a well-rounded education. His De Tradendis Disciplinis therefore deserves more attention that it has had to date within Law and Humanities. Giambattista Vico’s oration De Nostri Temporis Studiorum Ratione is an undeservedly forgotten late example in the humanist tradition. Both scholars’ views can be compared for their ideas on law and Aristotelean practical wisdom, phronèsis, which to Vico is the capacity of ingenium, seeing what must be done in a given situation. Vico postulates the primacy of ingenium to rational thought based on (Cartesian) theory. To Vives, cultivating practical wisdom by means of the study of the litterae humaniores will lead to the prudentia that jurists need to apply good judgment to human conduct and that can only be brought to fruition if lawyers develop a sense for context and perspective, hence also the importance both scholars attach to a comparative methodology to transmit knowledge. In their interrelations, Vives and Vico offer valuable suggestions to both contemporary Law and Humanities scholarship and legal practice.
