ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the rise of historical thinking within the European tradition and understands this development as a series of breaks with an Augustinian linear approach to historical time. By looking at a series of thinkers, ranging from the Renaissance theorist Niccolò Machiavelli to the Enlightenment philologist Giambattista Vico, this chapter explains how time’s passage came to be understood in ever more human terms. Among the other thinkers considered are Pierre Bayle (1647–1706), Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet (1627–1704), Leonardo Bruni (1370–1444), Jean Bodin (1530–1596), Guillaume Budé (1467–1540), Francesco Guicciardini (1483–1540), John Locke (1632–1704), Jean Mabillon (1632–1707), Niccolò Machiavelli (1489–1527), Joseph Scaliger (1540–1609), Lorenzo Valla (1407–1457), and Giambattista Vico (1668–1744).
