Alsted, Johann Heinrich

Alsted was a foremost encyclopedist of the early seventeenth century. He provided both a complete presentation of all the subjects of philosophy (of which encyclopedia consisted) and a method to learn them. This method was an original syn- thesis of the dialectic of Petrus Ramus, the com- binatorial art of memory of Raimond Lull and Giordano Bruno, and the method of presentation of philosophical disciplines of Bartholom€aus Keckermann. Alsted’s encyclopedism was intended as a remedy to the postlapsarian condi- tion of man and was functional to the pedagogical reform pursued at the Academy of Herborn; this was, in turn, an essential part of the Calvinist state reform of the county of Nassau-Dillenburg. In theology, the importance of Alsted consists of having introduced millenarianism in the Reformed Europe, though his early, optimistic views on the imminent end of the world would change to pessimistic as a consequence of the Thirty Years’ War