Johannes Althusius


Johannes Althusius was a German–Dutch jurist and Calvinist political philosopher.
He is best known for his 1603 work Politica Methodice Digesta, Atque Exemplis Sacris et Profanis Illustrata which revised editions were published in 1610 and 1614. The ideas expressed therein relate to the early development of federalism in the 16th and 17th centuries and the construction of subsidiarity.

Biography

Johannes Althusius was born in 1563 to a family of modest means in Diedenshausen, County Sayn-Wittgenstein, a Calvinist County in what is now the state of North Rhine Westphalia. Under the patronage of a local count, he attended the Gymnasium Philippinum in Marburg from 1577 and began his studies in 1581, concentrating in law and philosophy. He first studied Aristotle in Cologne, then studied law around 1585/86 under Denis Godefroy at Basel. In 1586, Althusius received his doctorate in civil and canon law from the University of Basel. While studying at Basel, Althusius lived with Johannes Grynaeus for a period of time, with whom he studied theology.
After completing his studies in 1586, Althusius became the first professor of law at the Protestant-Calvinist Herborn Academy of Nassau County. From 1592 to 1596, he taught at the Calvinist Academy in Burgsteinfurt/Westphalia.
He was married in 1596 in Siegen to Margarethe Neurath, with whom he had at least six children. In 1599 he was appointed president of the Nassau College in its temporary location in Siegen, returning with it to Herborn in 1602. At the same time he began his political career by serving as a member of the Nassau county council.
For the next several years Althusius was involved in several colleges in the area, variously serving as their president and lecturing on law and philosophy. In 1603 he was elected as a municipal trustee of the city of Emden, in East Frisia, where he ultimately made his fame. He became a city Syndic in 1604, which placed him at the helm of Emden's governance until his death.
In 1617 Althusius published his principal judicial work, Dicaeologicae. In this work, he categorized laws into two main types: natural laws and positive laws, and argued that natural law is "the will of God for men." Althusius contended that terms such as "common law" and "moral law" were other names for natural law. To know the true dictates of natural law, he argued, we must carefully study Scripture and tradition, as well as revelation and reason.
Johannes Althusius died on August 12, 1638, in Emden.

Political legacy

After his death Althusius remained a controversial thinker. His Politica was attacked by Henning Arnisaeus and Hugo Grotius during the 17th century for its defense of local autonomies against the rise of territorial absolutism and proponents of the modern united nation state. Interest in Althusius' theories continued into the second half of the 17th century, but Althusius was forgotten once the European wars of religion had ended.
Althusius had published in Latin using fashionable Ramist logic. As time passed, his political canon was read less and the barriers to interpreting Althusian politics increased. In the second half of the 19th century Althusius was rediscovered when Otto von Gierke published research on Politica. In Germany, an academic society was founded to research Althusius and his times. At a time when Otto von Bismarck worked towards unifying Germany Gierke promoted Althusius' preoccupation with political order based on majority decisions, traditional European relationships, and negotiated agreements as a timely theory on procedural federalism. In 1871 most German states unified to form the German Empire under Bismarck's imperial constitution. Gierke's book on Althusian federalism went on to become a source of inspiration for pluralism in Britain, with John Neville Figgis and Harold Laski adapting Gierke.

In 1932 the German–American professor Carl Joachim Friedrich published a new, slightly abridged edition of Althusius' Politica. After World War II Friedrich helped to draft the German constitution, the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany, while working as adviser in Allied-occupied Germany. Friedrich praised Althusius for having written the first "full-bodied concept of federalism" and so generated renewed interest in Althusius on both sides of the Atlantic. In 1964 Frederick Smith Carney published an abridged English translation of Politica, exposing Althusius to a wider readership. In 1968 Althusisus was credited as "the real father of modern federalism" by Daniel J. Elazar.

Althusian federalism

Johannes Althusius saw confederations as feasible and successful cooperative constitutional orders. In his view, a confederation could be built on successive levels of political community where each community pursues common interests. A village was a union of families, a town was a union of guilds, a province was a union of towns, a state was a union of provinces, and an empire was a union of states. Althusius' understanding of society as a community of communities informed his views on the nature of politics and federalism. For Althusius the purpose of politics was the "science of those matters which pertain to the living together" and federations perfectly put the purpose of politics into practice. Althusius's federalism did not involve the surrendering of power, instead it rested on responsibly sharing power.
Althusius became one of the principal European thinkers on federalism at the start of the 17th century while the European continent was ravaged by religious wars. Against the backdrop of the Reformation and the rise of absolutist monarchies, Althusius identified the German Holy Roman Empire as a commonwealth where the majority could decide matters for all. In reference to Aristotle, Althusius examined the confederate institutions of the Holy Roman Empire and established a theory of federalism where power is shared among autonomous smaller and larger political communities. In 1603 Althusius published Politica Methodice Digesta, setting out his theory on building a federal political system out of political associations that were grounded in the free initiative of citizens.
Althusius relied on the neo-Platonian idea of a universal brotherhood, thus he combined the Greco-Roman ideal of an association that was governed by reciprocal relationships with the Catholic Christian principle of subsidiarity. Althusius' teachings presented an alternative to the theories of his contemporary Jean Bodin on sovereignty. According to Althusus, natural law gave citizens the right to resist tyrannical government and sovereignty rested with the community, not the ruler. Therefore Althusius maintained that legitimate political authority was founded on smaller communities.

Major works

  • Civilis conversationis libri duo, 1601
  • Politica, the first edition of which was completed in 1603, is considered not only the most fully developed scheme of Calvinist political theory, but also the only systematic justification of the Dutch Revolt. Althusius took from thinkers in various fields, including Aristotle, Calvin, Bodin, Machiavelli, Grotius, and Peter Ramus; Politica cited close to 200 books in all; the first edition of Politica was received with wide acclaim in Emden and in the Netherlands beyond. It may have been influential on American via Alexander Henderson.
  • Dicaeologica libri tres, totum et universum Jus, Frankfurt, 1618. Sections of this work have been translated into English and published by Christian's Library Press as On Law and Power.

    Primary Works

  • Republished Latin version of the complete Politica. The first part is an Italian translation.

  • Translations of Works

Full Translations

  • Introduction by Corrado Malandrino.

  • Abridged or Partial Translations (German, English, Spanish)

  • Also issued London, 1965. Abridged English translation of Politica; translated by Frederick Smith Carney with a preface by Carl J. Friedrich.
  • Abridged English translation of Politica.
  • Abridged German translation of Politica; includes an Althusius biography and literature survey.
  • Shorter German translation of Politica.
  • Spanish translation, based on the 1932 abridged Latin edition, with introduction and critical remarks by Primitivo Mariño and presentation by Antonio Truyol y Serra.

    Commentaries

  • Originally published in Untersuchungen zur deutschen Staats- und Rechtsgeschichte VII; later reprinted by various publishers.
  • English translation of Gierke's German work.
  • Two-volume bibliography on Althusius.

  • Poetry

  • Research Literature

In English

  • In German

  • Conference proceedings, Steinfurter Schriften, 17.
  • Volume 131 of Beiträge zur politischen Wissenschaft. Conference proceedings.
  • Conference proceedings of the Johannes‑Althusius‑Gesellschaft.

  • In French

  • In Italian

  • In Korean

  • — . Includes a German summary "Ein Studium Über die Staats- und Rechtslehre des Johannes Althusius".