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Giambattista Vico’s readers in mid-nineteenth-century France, c. 1820-1850 https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.122888 Palmer, Daniele Giuseppe Bourke, Richard This dissertation is concerned with how Giambattista Vico’s writings were read in France during the first half of the nineteenth century. By disentangling Vico’s legacy from an historicist account, I chart how his work was used to inform the writing of universal histories, principally by Pierre-Simon Ballanche, Jules Michelet, Giuseppe Ferrari and Cristina Trivulzio di Belgiojoso. In providing a broader aperture of analysis, as well as one more sensitive to the French context, I look at the development of religious thought, especially Catholic theology and moral theory, as they were read in Vico and interpreted in nineteenth-century France. More than an object of antiquarian interest, the universal histories written and inspired by Vico's thought sought to answer the question of man in society. The basic posture of this thesis is to work on the philosophical and historical foundations of sociability as an item of religious thought. It raises questions such as: are human beings, born animals, sociable? Is humanity naturally guided towards social coexistence? How can harmonious societies emerge over time? And above all, how is all this possible in the aftermath of the French Revolution? More broadly, in shoring up the overt theological concerns of Vico’s readers, I trace the combined development of theories of French secularisation and modernisation alongside an ever-present concern with the ritualistic basis of the nation’s cultural and political life. University of Cambridge 2024-07-15 Thesis Doctoral Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) eng https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/391979 embargo 2026-11-06 https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/460ced95-c373-4c23-a750-8ac4bdc95f48/download 43afc7810dd21d0693bb4b1e22353f28 https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/7d14e4b0-055a-4a2e-ac17-024441fa7e81/download 87eda9de84448d1f82354d60eee3eb5f http://purl.org/NET/rdflicense/allrightsreserved Ballanche Civilisation French Political Thought Historicism Michelet Sociability Theology Vico