A. SORRENTINO, La cultura mediterranea nei Principi di Scienza nuova. Con scritti di G. Cacciatore, R. Diana, M. Sanna e A. Scognamiglio, a cura di A. Scognamiglio, Roma, Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2011, pp. 105

This volume offers Andrea Sorrentino's work La cultura mediterranea nei Principi di Scienza nuova after almost a century from its first and only publication in 1920. In it, Sorrentino aims at showing that the world of nations which Vico studies and sets forth in Scienza nuova is exclusively the Greek and the Roman world, therefore a "Mediterranean" world, since Vico's cultural background has been essentially formed through the study of Roman law and of the greek philosophy, together with the research of the classical studies. Furthermore, the volume collects the contributions of Giuseppe Cacciatore, Rosario Diana, Manuela Sanna and Alessia Scognamiglio. In his essay (Per un profilo di Andrea Sorrentino, pp. ***), Giuseppe Cacciatore, after tracing Sorrentino's scientific profile, reflects about some fundamental passages of his text: the framework of Sorrentino's research, which places itself halfway between the historical-scientific inquiry and the interest for the philosophy of culture; the belief that some limits of Vico's analysis, which he proposes, come from the conflicting relationship between the Neapolitan philosopher and his century; the centrality of the theme of the poetic knowledge in the Scienza Nuova; the problem of the Middle Ages between Rome's heritage and Germanic sources. Manuela Sanna (L'«epicentrismo» euromediterraneo di Vico nella lettura di Andrea Sorrentino) summarizes Sorrentino's interpretative proposals, all pivoting around the idea of «epicentrism»: the acknowledgment that Vico's great discovery has consisted in the alignment of Homer and Dante; the ideal eternal history is reconstructed almost exclusively with elements from the Greek-Latin world; the East Vico has knowledge of, is the East resulting from the shatters of classical culture, to which it is subordinate; Vico's whole culture was classical and italic; the possibility to affirm that the sole Greek-Latin civilization explains all the others civilizations of history. Though placing Sorrentino's thought in the context of his time, Rosario Diana (Andrea Sorrentino e la «boria» universalistica di Vico. Un confronto fruttuoso) remarks its philosophical implications about the ideas of belonging and diversity, metaphysical universality and the definite historicity of the nations and of the cultures. In conclusion, in her essay, Alessia Scognamiglio (Una nota su Vico e il Medioevo nell'interpretazione di Andrea Sorrentino) reviews Vico's historiography about the Middle Ages, highlighting how sometimes Sorrentino gives erroneous opinions about this theme and how the Germanic sources of European culture are not wholly extraneous to Vico's reconstruction. Furthermore, in the appendix to the volume (Appendice) the essay Gianbattista Vico e le razze mediterranee is reproduced. This essay, published in 1917 by Sorrentino in the review «Bulletin italien» in 1917, is to be considered a real preparatory study for the larger book published three years later.