Abstract

This article aims to explore and to analyze three meanings of the project called “encyclopaedistics”, created by the German scientist and thinker Novalis. The examined definitions try to find the identity of this concept through their negative restrictions, namely the various aspects that cannot be applied to the author’s designed conception. In order to accomplish its purpose, this paper focuses on the study of the text entitled Das Allgemeine Brouillon. Materialien zur Enzyklopädistik, where Novalis sketches the notion of encyclopaedistics. This unfinished work enables to discover the shape taken by such project, as well as to connect it with European Enlightenment and encyclopaedistics’s tradition from 16th to 18th centuries.