This is a study of political word use in 17th-century England. A theoretical introduction re-characterizes intellectual history through language theory. Part one outlines the fugitive nature of 17th-century political discourse and the pressures making its vocabulary indiscriminate and susceptible to anachronistic reconstruction. Part two specifically charts the changing relationships between the words "subject", "citizen", "resistance" and "rebellion". Finally, attention is turned to the historian's own vocabulary and its misleading imposition on alien patterns of word use.

This book is an exploration of closely related aspects of the historically problematic notion of humour. As the study of humour has been dominated by work in psychology, linguistics, sociology and politics, this may be seen as a ground-clearing exercise to encourage more sustained historical analysis, and provide a fresh perspective on humour and its study.In Part 1, the authorexamine the claim that humour is universal with a genealogy of study reaching back to classical antiquity. Chapter 1 provides an alternative history for the formation of a concept of humour and its derivative, a sense of humour. Chapter 2 surveys the alterations in meaning involved in humour becoming a loan word in other languages. It analyses what might be meant by claiming that humour is universal; and it examines the falsifications involved in the standard genealogical approach to the history of humour theory. In the light of its conclusions, the second essay provides a wide-ranging assessment of the difficulties of treating humour with more historical care. The main topics are contextualisation and intentionality, translation and reception. Within this context, the third essay explores satire and its definition over its long history, dealing with dictionary definition, definition by origin and conceptual implication. In Chapter 5 the author discusses definition by forms of semantic relationship and satire as a definable genre. It ends with attention to satiric definition. In the final essay, the author provides a case study of humour in recent history, an analysis of the important and influential Yes Minister and Yes, Prime Minister BBC television satires. It illustrates how satiric humour can carry modulated theories of politics into popular culture and get taken as reflections of political reality; and how the actual practice of language use in politics is subject to satire in the programs. Throughout the work humour is used to cast light on wider issues that are frequently discussed independently of its potentially complicating presence.

Satire was core to the work of Thomas Hobbes although his critics also used it as a weapon to ridicule him. Condren uses Hobbes as an example to demonstrate that an examination of the persona is needed to advance our understanding of a writer's philosophy.

Satire was core to the work of Thomas Hobbes although his critics also used it as a weapon to ridicule him. Condren uses Hobbes as an example to demonstrate that an examination of the persona is needed to advance our understanding of a writer's philosophy. He demonstrates that satire and philosophy were closely linked during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, offering a new perspective on the nature of philosophy during this period.

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 institutional setting. In so doing, this collection of essays by leading figures in the fields of both philosophy and the history of ideas provides access to key early modern disputes over what it meant to be a philosopher, and to the institutional and larger political and religious contexts in which such disputes took place.

This is the first collaborative volume to place Shakespeare's works within the landscape of early modern political thought. Until recently, literary scholars have not generally treated Shakespeare as a participant in the political thought of his time, unlike his contemporaries Ben Jonson, Edmund Spenser and Philip Sidney. At the same time, historians of political thought have rarely turned their attention to major works of poetry and drama. A distinguished international and interdisciplinary team of contributors examines the full range of Shakespeare's writings in order to challenge conventional interpretations of plays central to the canon, such as Hamlet; open up novel perspectives on works rarely considered to be political, such as the Sonnets; and focus on those that have been largely neglected, such as The Merry Wives of Windsor. The result is a coherent and challenging portrait of Shakespeare's distinctive engagement with the characteristic questions of early modern political thought.

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 institutional setting. In so doing, this collection of essays by leading figures in the fields of both philosophy and the history of ideas provides access to key early modern disputes over what it meant to be a philosopher, and to the institutional and larger political and religious contexts in which such disputes took place.

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 theory, and perhaps even political theory and moral agency as we know it. Argument and Authority is a major new work from a senior scholar of early modern political thought, of interest to a wide range of historians, philosophers and literary scholars.

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. The work was widely discussed during the seventeenth century and its conceptual vocabulary applied in discussions of the Revolution of 1688-9, when it was also posthumously republished. Despite Lawson's fame, however, his work fell into relative obscurity during the eighteenth century but it has recently been the subject of renewed scholarly interest. Politica has been reassessed as both historically and theoretically significant, and Lawson's contextual and interpretative importance emphasised, as a writer who enriches our understanding of Hobbes and Locke. This new modern edition is the first to be based on, and to correct, the rare and badly printed edition of 1660 and the partially corrected edition of 1689. Containing full scholarly apparatus, it is designed to make this significant work accessible to students as well as specialists through a substantial introduction and notes, contextual material and bibliographical guide.

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.

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 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 anachronistic images of political theory. Part 2 focuses on a sub-set of the political vocabulary, charting the changing relationships between the words subject, citizen, resistance, rebellion, the coinage of rhetorical exchange. The final chapter returns most explicitly to the themes of the introduction, by exploring how the historians own vocabulary can be systematically misleading when taken into the context of seventeenth-century word use.

Considers how political language has changed through time, looking at concrete examples from English and other languages. Conal Condren's fifth and final volume in a decades-long examination of political language, Political Vocabularies: Word Change and the Nature of Politics is a study of the mechanisms of change in political vocabularies over time. Though the main focus of the study is on English political vocabulary, Condren also compares political terms in other languages, such as French, German, Latin, Greek, Italian, and Japanese, and discusses how some of theseterms are imported into English. Considering concrete examples of extension and intension of meaning, neologism, euphemism, translation, loan words, and metaphor as used in political discourse, Condren constructs a theoretical model of the political that describes what precisely goes on when political words are used or when words are used politically. Thus Condren's analysis in this study is not merely linguistic but it bears on perennial questions about the nature of politics.The book will thus appeal not only to linguists and political scientists but to a broad readership of those interested in history, politics, and philosophy. Conal Condren is Emeritus Scientia Professor at the University of New South Wales and honorary professor at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Queensland, Australia.

Conal Condren examines the criteria for judging both works of political theory and texts associated with related academic genres. He discusses the rhetoric surrounding terms like originality," "influence," and "coherence," the value of these terms as criteria of textual assessment, and their use in charting the history of texts. Originally published in 1985. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Conal Condren examines the criteria for judging both works of political theory and texts associated with related academic genres. He discusses the rhetoric surrounding terms like originality," "influence," and "coherence," the value of these terms as criteria of textual assessment, and their use in charting the history of texts.

Originally published in 1985.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

This is the first collaborative volume to place Shakespeare's works within the landscape of early modern political thought. Until recently, literary scholars have not generally treated Shakespeare as a participant in the political thought of his time, unlike his contemporaries Ben Jonson, Edmund Spenser and Philip Sidney. At the same time, historians of political thought have rarely turned their attention to major works of poetry and drama. A distinguished international and interdisciplinary team of contributors examines the full range of Shakespeare's writings in order to challenge conventional interpretations of plays central to the canon, such as Hamlet; open up novel perspectives on works rarely considered to be political, such as the Sonnets; and focus on those that have been largely neglected, such as The Merry Wives of Windsor. The result is a coherent and challenging portrait of Shakespeare's distinctive engagement with the characteristic questions of early modern political thought.