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Ruben Alvarado, The Debate That Changed the West: Grotius versus Althusius.
Pantocrator Press, Aalten, 2018. xix + 258 pages. isbn 9789076660516.

The current political turmoil of the West, whatever one might think of it, has
certainly opened up political possibilities in both practice and thought. The
center or the “moderates” are no longer effective gatekeepers of acceptable
ideas. Indeed, new (or long-lost) ideas seem to be in high demand, making the
political trajectory of the West unclear. This book by Ruben Alvarado is timely
in that regard, and likely intentionally so, for it resurrects an early modern time
of political possibilities—when two brilliant men relying on the same political
tradition, though coming to opposing views, sought to shape the West. These
two men were Hugo Grotius—whose ideas decisively influenced the Western
legal and political traditions—and Johannes Althusius, the largely forgotten
Reformed political theorist whose work, since its nineteenth-century recovery,
has inspired only a niche crowd of associationist political theorists and com-
munitarians. In Alvarado’s presentation, Grotius, the individualist, is set against
Althusius, the communitarian. Our time is prepared for alternatives, especially
those that transcend “right” and “left,” and Althusius is one such alternative.
The content of the book is unique. Abridgments of Althusius’s Politica me-
thodice digesta and Grotius’s De iure belli ac pacis make up about three-quarters
of the book, each produced by Alvarado himself. The rest includes an introduc-
tory essay, discussions of each abridged book, and a compare/contrast chart
that sets the two theorists’ ideas side by side.
In the introductory essay, Alvarado argues that Western civilization is at a
dire moment and “it behooves us to take stock of how we arrived at this point….
Our forefathers could have chosen an alternative path.” The chosen path, how-
ever, “has led, either directly or indirectly, to the position we are in today” (1).
This path is the legal and political philosophy of Grotius. Alvarado insists that
the early seventeenth century offered the West two paths—the path of Althu-
sius and the path of Grotius. Despite drawing from the same source materials,
they synthesized those sources into radically different political visions. Much

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of Alvarado’s essay discusses the events, ideas, and thinkers that led the West
to the Grotius/Althusius showdown.
Alvarado first describes what made possible the flourishing of new ideas in
the early modern period. He briefly discusses the role of the printing press and
gunpowder, not deviating from standard historical accounts of their impor-
tance. But he also argues that silver mining, the lack of which contributed
heavily to the economic downturn of the fifteenth century, boomed in the six-
teenth, largely due to innovations in mining. This boom fundamentally trans-
formed the European economy, which set the conditions for the modern econ-
omy we experience today and greatly increased the powers of “secular” rulers,
creating tensions between the papacy and the Holy Roman emperor. All these
factors put “the received medieval world on shaky ground” (4). Furthermore,
the Muslim control of the Mediterranean Sea significantly hindered the
creation of effective trade routes with the East Indies, leading to the discovery
of the Cape of Good Hope, which “precipitated a new way of looking at the
world” (6).
The newness of the world opened up development in law and political the-
ory. In particular, political theorists developed the idea of national sovereignty.
The so-called school of Salamanca, appropriating the Roman legal tradition
(e.g., the ius gentium), recognized and formulated universal principles of con-
stitutional government and international relations. The “nation” came into fo-
cus as the “seat of sovereignty”—the people are sovereign. Fernando Vasquez
de Menchaca, a central figure in this school, insisted that the people grant
powers to the civil government, and civil magistrates rule only by consent of
the people. Moreover, he argued nations are independent from one another
and answer to no foreign power (civil or ecclesiastical) unless by consent or
mutual advantage.
The followers of Vasquez’s system included many of the early French Cal-
vinists, who developed what is now known as the “Calvinist resistance theory.”
Assuming the sovereignty of the people, these scholars of the “ancient consti-
tution” argued that resistance to unjust rulers is justified on the grounds that
political tyranny is a form of unprovoked warfare. Since the people granted
powers to these elites on the condition of their use for the common good, the
people have the right to assume these powers and replace tyrannous arrange-
ments for more beneficial and just ones. The most important document was
the highly influential and widely read work Vindiciae contra tyrannos.
Alvarado then helpfully discusses Althusius’s Politica and Grotius’s De iure
belli ac pacis. He emphasizes in particular the individualist/communitarian
contrast of their thought. Grotius, for example, argued that each individual
possesses sovereignty and transfers that sovereignty to the civil state; Althusius

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stresses the sovereignty of the body politic viewed as a whole. For Grotius, civil
society is composed of individuals; for Althusius, it is made up of lesser asso-
ciations (e.g., families and collegia). The purpose of political society for Grotius
is the protection of individual rights; for Althusius, it is, as Alvarado argues, for
the “fulfillment of the individual’s calling and purpose under God” (87). Gro-
tius viewed rights as prepolitical, while Althusius saw rights as acquired by
membership in “rights-bearing groups.” Finally, their views differ, according to
Alvarado, on the necessity of civil society: for Grotius, civil society forms out of
each individual’s appetite for society, but society is not, strictly speaking, nec-
essary; for Althusius, however, social life is not only necessary for human
existence, it is the only way to fulfill the command to love your neighbor as
yourself.
The book makes clear that the political thought of Althusius is a viable
third-way option for us today, especially given the recent defense of national-
ism and criticism of individualism. Althusius provides a political theory of be-
longing without the statism—a sense of “we” maintained in prepolitical hu-
man association. Furthermore, Althusius’s thought provides a principle for
unity in diversity: unity not by shaming or coercing people into a common
project of maximal individualism, but by allowing each association the maxi-
mal liberty to order itself according to its own principles and ends. This would
certainly solve a number of problems in our pluralistic society.
The Debate That Changed the West is an excellent introduction to the life,
times, and thought of Althusius and Grotius and a timely resource for our cur-
rent situation. Graduate students in political theory will certainly find Alvara-
do’s summaries and abridgements helpful. Still, I do have a few criticisms. First,
I’m unaware of any evidence of a “debate” in any form between Grotius and
Althusius. Second, after finishing the introductory essay, I was left desiring at
least a brief discussion on how and why Grotius’s thought came to dominate
Western legal and political thought. Third, a book of this type should have a
suggested reading list. Finally, Alvarado’s presentation and discussion indicate
more awareness of and interaction with the secondary literature on Althusius
than on Grotius. For this reason, the value of the book is found more in the sec-
tions on Althusius.

Stephen Wolfe
Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA, United States
swolfe5@lsu.edu

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