Johannes Althusius

Johannes Althusius (1563 – August 12, 1638) was a German–French jurist and Calvinist political philosopher. He is best known for his 1603 work "Politica Methodice Digesta, Atque Exemplis Sacris et Profanis Illustrata". 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.

Althusius was born in 1563 to a family of modest means in Diedenshausen, County Sayn Wittgenstein (Siegen Wittgenstein), 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. 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. 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 the Latin language 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, known as 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.

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 (consociatio symbiotica). 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 were 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. Althusius was Calvinist and did not hold Thomas Aquinas's theory on the commonwealth in high regard. 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 principled 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.