In this brilliant essay Chiaromonte reflects on the paradoxical relationship of individuals to the historical events that plagued Europe from the Napoleonic Wars to the First World War. To do this, it revisits the work of Stendhal, Tolstoy, Martin du Gard, Malraux or Pasternak, who offered devastatingly critical representations of faith in History and utopias based on the ideology of the necessary progress of humanity: the dreams of Reason produced monsters that led to the totalitarianism of the 20th century. But in addition, Chiaromonte discovers in all these authors an idea of the most modest and humane reason, aware that we only partially understand the course of events, because our existence is a tiny fragment of an impenetrable totality. The paradox of history is a lucid and honest reflection on hubris and on the place we occupy in the world.