Giambattista Vico in Finnegans Wake.

For the record, my page in Finnegans Wake is 452 not chosen entirely at random.

The Italian philosopher Vico. Sexson has implored us twice to look him up, and for good reason. Joyce, as claimed by Wikipedia, was heavily influenced by the ideas of Vico and one doesn't have to go far to find those traces. Vico proposed the idea that civilization develops in reoccurring cycles.

There are very obvious connections with Joyce's work and this principle. The theme of eternal return that we have discussed in relation to Finnegans Wake, and the structure in which the book is written lend themselves nicely to ideas of cyclical formation. Vico is referenced by name in Finnegans Wake on page 452. Joyce seems to understand that linear structure is difficult to let go of, the absence of a definite beginning and end is a scary concept. To this he writes,

The Vico road goes round and round to meet where terms begin. Still onappealed to by the cycles and unappalled by the recoursers we feel all serene, never you fret, as regards our dutyful cask.

Cycles, agains, from the end back to the beginning, but if the cycle never stops then how is the real end known, the true beginning? Do we start at age 35? Do we start when our parents die? Or do we start when we realize that to end is only to begin? Who knows. I shrug to that.

Regarding Vico, Joyce said, "My imagination grows when I read Vico as it doesn't when I read Freud or Jung." A source of imagination from the imagination machine himself!