Symbiotic Anthropology and Politics in a Postmodern Age: Rethinking the Political Philosophy of Johannes Althusius (1557–1638)
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Postmodern societies are increasingly characterized by a hyperpluralism that coincides with an interdependence between social spheres and structures. Actions in one sphere of life often impinge on other spheres of life. This leads to a consistent and endemic conflict between the social dynamics of plurality and the need for social unity. The symbiotic political theory of Johannes Althusius (1557–1638), which attempts to preserve unity through organized plurality, might be helpful in addressing the plurality/unity conundrum so characteristic of postmodern societies. Central to this approach are the anthropological and political notions of symbiosis, association, communication, and sharing. After providing some background to Althusius’s thought, this article discusses his symbiotic anthropology and explicates his symbiotic political theory. The article concludes by identifying five features of Althusius’s political theory that might be helpful to contemporary postmodern society.
 Les sociétés postmodernes se caractérisent de plus en plus par un hyper-pluralisme ethnoculturel qui coïncide avec une dépendance mutuelle croissante entre diverses sphères et structures sociales. Ce qui se fait dans l’une de ces sphères a souvent un impact sur d’autres. Il en découle un conflit systématique et permanent opposant la dynamique sociale du pluralisme et le besoin d’unité sociale. La théorie politique symbiotique de Johannes Althusius (1557–1638), qui cherche à maintenir l’unité par l’organisation du pluralisme, permettrait d’affronter la contradiction unité/pluralisme qui marque tant les sociétés postmodernes. Cette approche est fondée sur les notions politiques et anthropologiques de symbiose, d’association, de communication et de partage. Dans cet article, après avoir présenté quelques prémisses de la pensée d’Althusius, on examine son anthropologie de la symbiose et on analyse sa théorie politique de la symbiose. On termine l’article avec l’identification de cinq traits de la théorie politique d’Althusius qui pourraient être utiles aux sociétés postmodernes d’aujourd’hui.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.005 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.007 | 0.038 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.005 | 0.008 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".