A Translation from Latin into English of Giambattista Vico's Il Diritto Universale/ Universal Law

This new translation provides a complete picture of Vico as a forerunner of constructivist epistemology. In addition, it demonstrates that he was a critic of the enlightenment, a significant humanist and culture theorist who influenced Karl Marx and James Joyce. It is now generally acknowledged among Vico scholars that the Universal Law is the first version of the New Science. In it the reader finds all the necessary keys to the New Science as well as the most fascinating treatment of Roman jurisprudence ever written. In the work Vico shows the importance of the ius gentium as the true sense of universal law, that counters what he called the 'natural law of the philosophers' that of Selden, Pufendorf, and Grotius - which he attacks repeatedly in the New Science and against which it, as well as the Universal Law, is written. The ius gentium becomes the basis of Vico's three ages of gods, heroes, and humans that comprise his 'ideal eternal history,' upon which his science of the common nature of the nations is based.