Mito, poetica e filosofia della storia: Herder e Mario Pagano

This article investigates the reasons why Herder – among the representatives of the Neapolitan school of Vico, whose praises he sings in the tenth collection of Briefe zu Beförderung der Humanität (1793-1797), a work that shows the continuation of a thought on the history of mankind from the Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit (1784-1791) – never explicitly mentions the jurist Francesco Mario Pagano (1748-1799). This is strange, because Pagano had the merit of having happily participated in the diffusion of a philosophical-historical method, useful for investigating the history of the development of civilisations over the centuries. Pagano, in 1783-1785, had printed a first version of his work Saggi politici: Del civile corso delle nazioni o sia de’ principi, progressi, e decadenza della società. In 1791-1792 the second edition appeared, amended for reasons of censorship; in the meantime, however, Herder had been able to assimilate the thought in the ways that are set out here, of which the outline of the journal «Aurora» (1799), formulated in the year Pagano was executed in Naples, and the appeal of the journal «Adrastea» (1801-1803) to the “Nemesis of History” shows an evident imprint.