Introducción a la obra enciclopédica del ilustrado Juan Andrés: «Origen, progresos y estado actual de toda la literatura»

Abstract

This paper presents the first universal History of Arts and Science, «Origen, progresos y estado actual de toda la literatura», written by an enlightened Jesuit, Juan Andrés (1740-1817). This work is a good representative of the cultural movement that could be called catholic encyclopaedism, in contrast with the French laic encyclopaedism and the german reformed encyclopaedism. In this introductory paper, Juan Adrés’ work is defined as a dendritic and universal history as opposed to the unambiguous and lineal Hegelian history.