PRISCILA ARAGÃO ZANINETTI

The conception of history developed by Giambattista Vico in his work, New Science, seems to combine distinct and perhaps even ambivalent temporal structures. Beyond the time of human creations – historical time – this conception would also posit another temporal dimension that, underlying the eternal ideal history, would mobilize a model inaccessible to experience: eternity. These elements combine into a conception of history that, despite Cartesian rationalism, would affirm not only the scientific nature of historical knowledge but also that this knowledge is constituted from the study of humanities with a rhetorical tradition, which were so disrespected in the late 17th century. These temporal structures would also trace back to two argumentative axes in Vico's work: epistemology and metaphysics, which this project intends to address.