Philosophical and Theological Aspects in the Thought of Johannes Althusius

Abstract

The objective of this work is to shed light on a theme that involves philosophical and theological aspects and that ends up in a political theory of resistance to despotic power. This is done from an analysis of some aspects of the work of the German jurist, Johannes Althusius. He was a Calvinist author who acted academically and politically between the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, leaving a huge legacy in the legal and political field. His theory of rights thought of society in an organic way and focused on the dependence of men to each other and these to God. Without these principles, a just society would not be possible, in the view of Althusius. These Althusian assumptions were constructed from a cultural collection that may be termed the Calvinist system of thought, where the author in question figures as one of the great exponents of early modernity. However, for this to be a reality, Althusius used a series of Calvinistic presuppositions, from the clearly Calvinist ramistic thought in debate with the exponents of the scholasticism of that moment until a re-reading of the Theology of the Alliance that is at the base of the representative forms and federal government.