Pagina 15 - BCSV, XLI, 2

REFLECTIONS ON THE IDEAL ETERNAL HISTORY
In this article I want to explore some of the difficulties involved in
Vico’s account of the progressive rationality exhibited in the course of
the historical development of each nation. At the root of his problems,
I shall argue, lies a defective account of human nature, which explains
his failure to reach a satisfactory reconciliation of at least two aspects
of thought represented by reference to two of the four thinkers he pre-
sented in the Autobiography1 as profound influences upon him, Plato
and Tacitus. As he writes:
Up to this time Vico had admired two only above all other learned men: Plato
and Tacitus; for with an incomparable metaphysical mind Tacitus contemplat-
ed man as he is, Plato as he should be. And as Plato with his universal knowl-
edge explores the parts of nobility which constitute the man of intellectual
wisdom, so Tacitus descends into all the counsels of utility whereby, among the
infinite irregular chances of malice and fortune, the man of practical wisdom
brings things to good issue2.
Although it might seem unusual to describe Tacitus, normally clas-
sified as an historian, as possessed of an ‘incomparable metaphysical
mind’, Vico’s reason is quite clear. If metaphysics is the study of reality,
then Tacitus is engaged in a metaphysical enterprise in so far as he is
inquiring into the reality of human nature: the way men are and how
1 The Autobiography of Giambattista Vico [hereafter The Autobiography], tr. by
M. H. Fisch and Th. G. Bergin, Ithaca-New York, 1963.
2 Ivi, p. 138.