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F O U R Theoretical Consequences: Absolutism and Territorial Centralization RENAISSANCE AND REFORMATION: THOSE WERE the epochal cues1 for a nearly encyclopedic review of knowledge that was well under way by the beginning of the seventeenth century. Like many others, Althusius was well acquainted with almost the entire literature on philosophy, politics, and related subjects, from its classical beginnings in ancient Greece and Rome, to the scholastic writings of the Middle Ages, and down to the debates of his time.2 Unlike some of his learned colleagues, Althusius quoted from and referred to this literature widely (some would say endlessly) and, for the most part, accurately: two hundred references to Jean Bodin, for example , who had given the first modern definition of sovereignty in 1576, up to a hundred references to most of his important contemporaries, not even to speak of more than two thousand citations from the Bible. These references are an essential part of Althusius' argument, but they hardly provide quantitative evidence of his theoretical intention or orientation. For someone who wanted to establish politics as a new and normative science, the wealth of biblical quotes in particular constituted a welcome and indispensablearsenal for proving his point, not that of the Bible or theology: that there was in fact nothing in the Bible that would stand in the way of constructing a secular regime of politics on the principles of natural law. From this perspective, all those two thousand biblical quotes together surely cannot outshine in importance that one sentence, directed against Bodin, where Althusius flatly states that the right of sovereignty is "neither supreme and perpetual, nor above the law."3 1 Not in these exact terms, of course, which became historiographical labelsonly later on. 2 Seethe bibliography of nearly 500 works cited by Althusius,as compiled by Carl Joachim Friedrich in his 1932 edition of the Politica. 3 Non...est summa potestas, non perpetua neque lega soluta (IX.21). 42 Theoretical Consequences: Absolutismand Territorial Centralization 43 In fact, most authors of the time used the very same sources. The significance of their arguments therefore cannot be determined by looking at what sources they referred to, more than others or at all, but by examining how they used them. Even a brief comparison of Althusius with two of the most outstanding and influential theorists of the epoch, Jean Bodin and Thomas Hobbes, can easily demonstrate the point: • Bodin, for example, writing a generation before Althusius, rejects the Aristotelian doctrine of the citizen as one who participates actively in politics4 because, according to his definition, there can only be one sovereign and his subjects in a polity. For the same reason, he cannot see the (German) Empire as a confederal polity among a plurality of autonomous and equal parts, but as an aristocracy of sovereign estates with the emperor as a mere figurehead.5 • Hobbes, writing a generation after Althusius, refers to the ancient Jewish Covenant of the Old Testament as evidence that only the sovereign can recognize and interpret the word of God.6 And he remarks that it was the vain and erroneous philosophy of Aristotle in particular which led to the confusion about the true meaning of the ancient Scripture.7 • In between, Althusius asserts that the old Jewish Covenant established the best polity of all times indeed,8 but the Aristotelian doctrine of the active citizen appears to him as the natural foundation of all politics.9 The Empire, finally, is to him a prime example of a commonwealth in which the estates share in the sovereign power of constituting the emperor as supreme magistrate or chief administrator.10 These authors obviously drew very different conclusions from a body of literary and historical knowledge that was common to them all. They were likewise all searching for new political solutions to what they recognized as a profound social and political crisis resulting from the irretrievable loss of universalChristian unity. Christian universalism had never made the pre-modern world a peaceful one, but it had allowed thinking about how such a world should be governed ideally. Such a 4 Les six Livres de la Republique [1576], 1.6. I am mainly using the 1606 English translation by Richard Knolles:Jean Bodin, The Six Bookes of a Commonweale, ed. with an Introduction by Kenneth D. McRae (Cambridge:HarvardUniversity Press, 1962). 5 Republique, 1.8, and II.6. 6 Leviathan, 40 (250). 7 Leviathan, 44 (334). 8 Politica, Praefatio 1614. 9 Politica, 1.5; I.I9. 10 Politica...

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