Haunted by Historicism:

Abstract

he Anthropocene has become the latest master narrative that challenges the very foundations on which the humanities have been built. Even though this new “Age of Humanity”might, by definition, encourage a new emphasis on humanities scholarship, the concept of the Anthropocene places upon “humanity” the responsibility for having radically and profoundly changed the ecology of the planet, to a point where several tipping points may soon be breached with incalculable but likely catastrophic consequences for the future of the Earth. An essential part of this epochal consciousness is the realization thatmany of the categories used to grasp the relationship between humans and nature have become obsolete. In this way, the Anthropocene asks us to rethink the principle that has traditionally formed the core of the humanities (as the study of human civilizations and culture): the verum/factum principle, as it was envisioned by Giambattista Vico (1668–1744). Since Vico, the humanities have staked their fundamental claim to be disciplines characterized by the same scholarly rigor as the sciences, and their right to exist as distinguished from the natural sciences, on the