ABSTRACT
The clarification of the concept of the ideal and eternal history demands first of all that it be dissociated from all forms of eternism, of whatever provenance. The eternity which adheres to the natural law of the nations as its property is in turn equated with immutability. The concept of this immutability is developed against the foil of another concept of eternity and immutability which he has already found reprehensible in the position of jusnaturalism. To eternism, Giambattista Vico is adamandy opposed. The storia ideale eterna is not, for him, a technique for the dissolution of time-process, of reducing it to appearance arid absurdity, but of determining its constitutive ideality and necessity. The time-structure of history is not simple, but complex, not linear, but contrapuntal. Vico discusses the problem of the time structure of history against two diverse backgrounds. The first of these is the internal life of the nation and other is the idea of the universality of humanity.
