Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim

All of Agrippa’s works are to be considered as clearly defined events in a broader and serious philosophical, religious and moral meditation on the social significance of learning in his own time. Agrippa’s anthropological and gnoseological optimism, which testifies his confidence in human nature and in its potential to accomplish its own destiny, contrasts with his deeply pessimistic opinion about the contemporary culture: in his view, an unrelenting historical decay prevents the academic learning and the institutional religion from fulfilling the educative role they should play. The ‘paradox’, which Agrippa challenges his readers with, lies precisely in the simultaneous presence of two speculative concerns, which are scattered on different texts, but which express, in spite of their apparent inconsistency, a complex cultural and religious project.