Faced with the task performed by the “historians of ideas” inspired by Leopoldo Zea’s project, more philosophical reflection on history and its meaning in Latin America is required. The analogical hermeneutic provides some assumptions necessary to undertake this task, overcoming univocal rationalist accounts, postmodern ambiguity and, in short, ideologies of history. Rethinking the meaning of history does not mean anticipatory discourse on how, where and when it will finish. It is rather “a performative speech,” inviting to engage in historical reality to transform it, not in terms of ideology but in terms of affirmation, forgiveness, dialogue and action. Hope is the feeling needed to substantiate the philosophical meaning of historical understanding.