Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dzt6s Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T04:46:07.453Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

6 - The limits of subjection

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 November 2009

Get access

Summary

In the final chapters Lawson returns to reiterate the themes surrounding subjection and sovereignty. Although there is repetition there is also elaboration – not always consistent with earlier discussion and there are shifts of emphasis.

The creation of hierarchical orders of subjection is of divine ordination through God's power (Pol. 353–4). Submission, a recognition of God's commands encapsulated in the Fifth Commandment and in Romans 13, is required across a full range of human relationships. That between sovereigns and subjects is paradigmatic of those between parents and children, husbands and wives, masters and servants, teachers and scholars. All involved in such relationships, however, are equally subject to God. It is of course this reiterated proviso which generates the quintessential problem of the human condition for Lawson, that defined by the clash between obedience to a remote God and to an immediate sovereign who only participates in and uses God's power (Pol. 355, 411 ff.). What is emphasised now, however, is that understanding this is largely a matter of having an adequate battery of appropriately discriminate classifiers. It seems that if we have not the terms to delineate the notion of subjection it is difficult for us to see the pattern of our obligations. Thus Lawson says of Bodin, he ‘mistakes much by confounding Civis (et) subditus. For though every Subject be Civis, yet every Civis is not a Subject’ (Pol. 356; cf. 26).

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1990

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

  • The limits of subjection
  • Conal Condren
  • Book: George Lawson's 'Politica' and the English Revolution
  • Online publication: 04 November 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511558405.009
Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

  • The limits of subjection
  • Conal Condren
  • Book: George Lawson's 'Politica' and the English Revolution
  • Online publication: 04 November 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511558405.009
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • The limits of subjection
  • Conal Condren
  • Book: George Lawson's 'Politica' and the English Revolution
  • Online publication: 04 November 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511558405.009
Available formats
×