Pagina 32 - BCSV, XLI, 2

LEON POMPA 32
REFLECTIONS ON THE IDEAL ETERNAL HISTORY. This essay argues
that a defective account of human nature lies at the roots of Vico’s theory of the
progressive rationality exhibited in the course of the historical development.
Namely, a failed reconciliation of a metaphysics of reality (embodied for Vico by
Tacitus) and metaphysics of eternal ideas (embodied by Plato) produces false
empirical hypotheses about the origins of human society and about the historic
sequence. By rejecting the very idea of basing the understanding of history upon
a substantive non-historical theory, the essay aims to radicalize Vico’s insight that
man is an essentially historical being in the acknowledgment that the content of
human consciousness is itself historical.