Abstract

[Future as a political problem. Francis Bacon and Giambattista Vico as matrix of modernity]. This essay shows the importance of the theme of the future as a political problem in Francis Bacon and Giambattista Vico. Bacon theorizes the possibility to control the future through experiments and the resulting natural laws. The whole construction of society has to be planned in order to achieve this end. In Vico the future appears to be a purely political problem, since the control of the future deals with the possibility to establish the rules that control the actions of the social group. Considering the control of the future as the core of political modernity allows to appreciate the crucial differences between Bacon and Vico, on one side, and Hobbes, who represents the “canonical” political modernity, on the other side. Hobbes’ Leviathan presents the social contract as the closure of political temporality. The theme of the future as a political problem allows then to understand the plurality of modernity, as it emerges from the different proposed solutions: a technical-scientific one in Bacon, a contractualistic one in Hobbes and a mythopoetic one in Vico.