Lawson's Politica is a systematic treatise on politics in church and state and is arguably the most significant work of political theory to have been printed during the Restoration crisis of 1659-60. It was widely discussed during the seventeenth century and particularly the revolution of 1688-9. This new modern edition is based on, and corrects the first printed editions of 1660 and 1689, and contains an extensive introduction and notes designed to make this significant work accessible to both students and specialists.

This is the first full account, analysis and subsequent history of George Lawson's Politica, 1660 89. For long accepted as a significant figure, through his criticism of Hobbes and his possible influence on Locke, Lawson has never been studied in depth, nor has his biography been previously established. Professor Condren here provides the context and the analysis of Lawson's major work, in the process re-dating it and providing a quite different interpretation from previous readings. A substantial section is devoted to the history of the text and its use in controversies in the period 1660...

Lawson's Politica, a seventeenth-century treatise on politics in church and state.

Conal Condren offers a radical reappraisal of the character of moral and political theory in early modern England through an exploration of pervasive arguments about office. In this context he explores the significance of oath-taking and three of the major crises around oaths and offices in the seventeenth century. This fresh focus on office brings into serious question much of what has been taken for granted in the study of early modern political and moral theory concerning, for example, the interplay of ideologies, the emergence of a public sphere, of liberalism, reason of state, de facto...

In this groundbreaking collection of essays the history of philosophy appears in a fresh light, not as reason's progressive discovery of its universal conditions, but as a series of unreconciled disputes over the proper way to conduct oneself as a philosopher. By shifting focus from the philosopher as proxy for the universal subject of reason to the philosopher as a special persona arising from rival forms of self-cultivation, philosophy is approached in terms of the social office and intellectual deportment of the philosopher, as a personage with a definite moral physiognomy and...

This, the first full analysis of Arbuthnot's Art of Political Lying (1712), argues that the work is a commentary on long-standing themes of debate in science, rhetoric and philosophy and should be seen as a seminal satire standing in opposition to the practice of Swift and Pope. Rather than simply condemning dishonesty, Arbuthnot raises serious questions about the elusive nature of truth in politics. The argument thus traverses literary analysis, intellectual history and philosophy. An original version of the Art of Political Lying, based on English and French editions is supplied in the...

In this groundbreaking collection of essays the history of philosophy appears in a fresh light, not as reason's progressive discovery of its universal conditions, but as a series of unreconciled disputes over the proper way to conduct oneself as a philosopher. By shifting focus from the philosopher as proxy for the universal subject of reason to the philosopher as a special persona arising from rival forms of self-cultivation, philosophy is approached in terms of the social office and intellectual deportment of the philosopher, as a personage with a definite moral physiognomy and...

This is a study of the words of political discourse in seventeenth-century England from which we now reconstruct its theories. Taking its starting point in modern theories of language, intellectual history is first reconceptualised. Part 1 presents an overview of the political domain in the seventeenth century arguing that what we see as the political was fugitive and subject to reductionist pressures from better established fields of discourse. Further, there were strong pressures leading towards an indiscriminate and relatively general vocabulary, in turn facilitating the imposition of our...