Abstract

The text analyzes Pietro Piovani’s ideengeschichtlich conception, developed as a rupture with the theoretical and the historiographical leading trends in Italy between the end of the Fifties and the beginning of the Sixties – on one hand, the idealistic-actualistic mainstream, on the other, the different “neo-illuministic” perspectives. From this criticism, the critical and problematical character of Piovani’s historicism derives. According to Piovani, every form of universalization of history is a constitutional enemy of modern historical knowledge, which is always the result of the communication between individualities, and, for this reason, it never can lead to a knowledge founded on the “purity” of the concept, regardless of the individuality which thinks it. On this horizon, Piovani’s concept of Ideengeschichte develops. Accordingly, ideas are no longer empty and uncontaminated abstractions, because they are interpreted in the facts, in which they act. Ideas become what Piovani calls «human ideations», which constitute «the historical forms of civilization», observable in their mobility. This way, by means of Ideengeschichte, history of philosophy reforms itself in a research which neglects the project to be a history of an absolute and monastic thought and, at the same time, the distinction between Ideengeschichte and history of events definitely dissolves in the Twentieth century. This dissolution represents a point of arrival of a two-century aged process, analyzed by Piovani through a historicistic and critical-problematic perspective