Johannes Althusius

Johannes Althusius (also: Althaus, Alphusius; * 1563 in Diedenshausen; † August 12, 1638 in Emden ), was a German jurist, Calvinist political theorist, City Counsel and politicians (from 1604) in Emden.

Life and career

Johannes Althusius was born into a peasant family in the county of Sayn- ​​Wittgenstein. The father, Hans Althaus, was count's wool buyers and mill owner in Diedenshausen. Althusius visited in 1577 at the high school Philippinum in Marburg and was in 1581 enrolled at the Faculty of Arts Cologne. He then studied law in Basel, where he frequented the circle of humanists Basil Amerbachs. Maybe he learned from a study visit to Geneva and the French François Hotman Monarchomachen and the lawyers and Pandektisten Dionysius Gothofredus know. After his PhD in rights in Basel in 1586 Althusius was due to his first work " De arte Jurisprudentiae Romanae methodice digestae libri II " ( Basel 1586), in which he confessed to the method of empirical realism, as they developed the French logician Peter Ramus had appointed the first legal scholar at the embossed by the federal theology Calvinistic reformed Nassau High School Herborn.

In Herborn Althusius was right next to his professorship at the same time as the count's advice and legal counsel to his sovereign Nassau, Count Johann VI. the elders, a brother of William of Orange, active. 1592 was followed by a call to the Calvinist Althusius High School in Burg Steinfurt, the gymnasium Arnoldinum. 1596 he returned to the Nassau High School, which had been laid at this time of Herborn and Siegen. 1599/1600 was Althusius rector of the Nassau High School in Siegen, 1602 again the now relocated back to Herborn High School, said after the sovereign Johannea. In 1603 he published his major work, the " Politica Methodice digesta ." 1604 Althusius City Counsel of the City of Emden. He was so into old age, refused several calls from a legal scholar at Dutch universities and remained his adopted home Emden faithfully until his death.

Scientific work

Althusius developed with a Calvinist, federally - theologically influenced and shaped government and natural law understanding of the first normative and systematic theory of the state of the feudal monarchy in the early modern period. Constitutional law, which applies in his major work, the " Politica " as the most important political theorists of Calvinism, is considered in the early development of federalism theory as the largest federalism theorists of the 16th and 17th centuries. Coupled with this are the history of ideas also attributed ideas to develop and design the principle of subsidiarity Althusius.

In his first time in 1603 published " Politica Methodice digesta ," whose third edition is considered by 1614, including his experience in political practice in Emden as the most important, he developed in his estate- corporatist state theory a bottom built up konsoziale, community-oriented State - and social science with that of the family over the stalls to the State stepwise pooling ( consociatio ) of the individuals who have to obey the commands of God and are connected to each other in the sense of an organic body of the people in the sovereignty of the state's population. This concept became the basis of specifically German state theories of dual sovereignty in the following decades.

The sovereignty of the Calvinist understanding state theorist is considered as an alternative to the monarchical absolutist thinking French theorist Jean Bodin sovereignty. The understanding of the sovereignty of the people is not yet connected with Althusius with individual rights as they come until later in rational natural law and contract theory to express his style similar to the Monarchomachen and ideas taken from the right of resistance against tyrannical rulers remain on the representatives of the estates and the officers of the monarchic- feudal system of rule limited.

Althusius is mainly perceived in the history of political ideas as a transitional theorist who has written the most mature and most systematic theory of the state of the early modern corporate state, has the breakthrough to modern constitutional state, to the modern, the modern understanding of democracy, but not yet completed his state model. Effect of historical importance and influence of the constitutional theory of Althusius, who had initially found in the academic literature more widely, especially since remained in the time of the rise of absolutism in the 17th century, mainly to the Calvinist environment - especially in Germany and the Netherlands - limited.

Afterlife and commemoration

Founded in Münster 1959 Johannes Althusius Society, Society for the Exploration of the doctrines of natural law and the constitutional history of the 16th to 18th centuries, researches, based on the life and work of Althusius the law and political doctrines as well as the legal and constitutional history of the early modern period pan-European as an up to the present epoch still influential legal and political thought.

In his birthplace Diedenshausen, a district of Bad Berleburg, Althusius, a memorial has been established in homeland house of the village. The town of Bad Berleburg named her high school in 1962 by Johannes Althusius. Also in Emden was the gymnasium, its precursor dating back as grammar school until the 15th century, renamed in 1972 in Johannes Althusius - Gymnasium.

Selected Literature

• Iuris Romani's libri duo. Ad leges Methodius Rameae conformati. Basilea 1586 digitized
• De civilis Conversationis Libri Duo: Methodicé Digesti et exemplis sacris et passim profanis illustrati. Hanoviae, 1601
• Politica Methodice digesta et exemplis sacris et profanis illustrata: Cui in fine adjuncta est Oratio de panegyrica utilitate, necessitate et antiquitate scholarum. Herbonae Nassoviorum 1603 digitized
• Dicaelogicae Libri Tres: Totum et universum jus, quo utimur Methodicé complectentes. Herbonae Nassoviorum, 1617

• Politica Methodice digesta of Johannes Althusius with an Introduction by Carl Joachim Friedrich, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1932
• Johannes Althusius: Basic concepts of politics. From " Politica methodice digesta 1603 ", edited by Erik Wolf, Frankfurt am Main, 1948
• The Politics of Johannes Althusius. An abridged translation of the Third Edition of Politica Methodice digesta and including the Prefaces to the First and Third Edition. Translated with an Introduction by Frederick S. Carney, Preface by Carl J. Friedrich, Beacon Press, Boston, 1964 ( London, 1965)
• Johannes Althusius Politica. An Abridged Translation of Politics Methodicolly Set Forth and Illustrated with Sacred and Profane Examples. Edited and Translated with an Introduction by Frederick S. Carney, Foreword by Daniel J. Elazar. Indianapolis, 1994
• Johannes Althusius policy. Dt. Part translation of the Politica of Johannes Althusius by Heinrich Janssen, published in selection, revised and introduced by Dieter Wyduckel. (Introduction by Althusius biography and newer literature review ), Berlin, 2003, ISBN 3-428-11159-1

• Roderich of Stintzing: Althusius, John. In: General German Biography (ADB ). Volume 1, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1875, p 367
• Otto von Gierke: Johannes Althusius and the development of natural law theory of the state, in Berlin in 1880, unchanged 7th edition Aalen, 1981
• Erik Wolf: Johannes Althusius. In: Essays, trans Large law thinkers of German intellectual history. Tübingen 1939, 4th edition 1963, p.177 -219
• Heinz Antholz: The political effectiveness of Johannes Althusius in Emden, Aurich, 1955
• Heinrich Mitteis: Althusius, John. In: New German Biography ( NDB ). Volume 1, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1953, ISBN 3-428-00182-6, pp. 224 f ( digitized ).
• Peter Jochen Winters: The Politics of Johannes Althusius and their contemporary sources, Freiburg / Br, 1963.
• Hans Ulrich Scupin / Ulrich Scheuner, Althusius bibliography, edited by Dieter Wyduckel, Berlin, 1973
• Carl Joachim Friedrich: Johannes Althusius and his work in the development of the theory of politics, Duncker and Humblot, Berlin, 1975
• Michael Behnen: ruler image and technique of domination in the ' Politica ' of Johannes Althusius, in: Journal of Historical Research 11 (1984 ), pp. 417-472
• Hasso Hofmann: representation in the political theory of the early modern period - the question of the representation principle in the ' Politica ' of Johannes Althusius, in ibid: Legal - Politics - Constitution. Studies in the History of Political Philosophy, pp. 1-30, Frankfurt 1986
• Daniel J. Elazar (ed.): Federalism as Grand Design. Political Philosophers and the Federal Principle. Publius Book, Boston, 1987
• Karl- Wilhelm Dahm / Werner Krawietz / Wyduckel Dieter (ed.): Political Theory of John Althusius, Berlin 1988
• Thomas O. Hüglin: Societal federalism. The Political Theory of John Althusius, Berlin / New York, 1991
• Giuseppe Duso / Werner Krawietz / Wyduckel Dieter (ed.): consensus and Konsoziation in the political theory of early federalism, Berlin, 1997
• Thomas O. Hüglin: Early Modern Concepts for a Late Modern World. Althusius on Community and Federalism. Wilfrid Laurier University Press, Waterloo / Ontario, 1999
• Peter Blickle / Thomas O. Hüglin / Wyduckel Dieter (ed.): Subsidiarity as a legal and political principle of order in church, state and society, Berlin, 2002
• Emilio Bonfatti / Giuseppe Duso / Merio Scattola (ed.): Political concepts and historical context in the Politica Methodice digesta of Johannes Althusius, Wiesbaden, 2002
• Frederick S. Carney / Heinz Schilling / Wyduckel Dieter (ed.): Jurisprudence, Political Theory and Political Theology. Symposium on the 400th anniversary of the Politica of Johannes Althusius 1603-2003, Berlin, 2004
• Henning Ottmann: Johannes Althusius or Reformed policy on German, overview presentation in: idem (ed.): History of political thought, the modern age. From Machiavelli to the great revolutions, Vol 3/1. Pp. 93 ff, Stuttgart / Weimar 2006.
• Peter Nitschke: The "kingdom " in the political theory of John Althusius. In: Peter Nitschke / Mark Feuerle (ed.): Imperium et Comitatus, Frankfurt 2009, pp. 31-52.
• Corrado Malandrino / Wyduckel Dieter (ed.): Political- legal lexicon of the ' Politica ' of Johannes Althusius. The art of sacred - unswerving, fair, reasonable and happy symbiotic community, with an introduction and critical discussion of the ' Politica '. Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-428-12975-1.
• Philip A. Knoell: State and communication in the policy of Johannes Althusius. Studies on political science in the early modern period. Berlin, 2011 (also Diss University of Augsburg ), ISBN 978-3-428-13539-4.
• Ernst Reibstein: Johannes Althusius as a continuer of the School of Salamanca. Studies on the history of ideas of law and to the old Protestant doctrine of natural law, Freiburg law and political science treatises, Vol 5, Karlsruhe: CF Müller 1955