Johannes Althusius (redirected from Johann Althaus)

Althusius, Johannes 

Born 1557 in Diedenshausen; died Aug. 12, 1638, in Emden. German jurist and theorist of law.

Althusius was an ardent Calvinist. In his main work, Politica . . . (1603), Althusius was an early representative of the bourgeois theory of natural law, which he based on the principles of Calvinist theology. Althusius developed the idea of popular sovereignty and argued that the people have the right to overthrow and execute tyrannical rulers (in this respect he was close to the monarchomachs). The work of Althusius was essentially a theoretical justification of the republican system in the northern Netherlands.

WORKS

Politica methodice digesta et exemplis sacris et profanis illustrata. Cambridge, 1932.

REFERENCES

Kovalevskii, M. Ot priamogo narodopravstva k predstavitel’nomu . . ., vol. 2. Moscow, 1906.
Gierke, O. Johannes Althusius .... 5th ed. Meisenheim am Glan, 1958.