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 1660-89, and there is some reassessment of
the relationship between Hobbes, Locke and Lawson. The study also uses
Lawson's text to reopen questions about English seventeenth-century
political theory in general, and to prefigure a theoretical study on
metaphor and political conceptualisation. The book thus operates on a
number of levels, philosophical and linguistic as well as historical.