La disperazione eroica. L'ombra di Vico nel pessimismo trascendente di Miguel de Unamuno

The intent of the following pages is not to question Vico's Unamuno reader and interpreter, nor to dwell on the influence that the Neapolitan thinker was able to exercise, more or less directly, on the Rector of Salamanca. The essay is aimed rather at fathoming that same intellectual and existential restlessness that lies at the bottom of the reflection of the two philosophers and that runs through the entire work, highlighting the "heroic despair" that moves and marks the steps of their complex speculative journey. In this perspective, some central themes of Unamuno's thought - such as the tragic sense of life, transcendent pessimism and imagination - are analyzed in the shadow of Vico's philosophy, finally coming to argue that the figure of Don Quixote can be understood as the "fantastic universal" of the "desperate hero", as a symbol of a moral of heroic creation.