The Secular Contract: The Politics of Enlightenment
Alex Schulman "The Secular Contract: The Politics of Enlightenment"
ISBN: 1441106642 | 2011 | PDF | 256 pages | 1,2 MB
ISBN: 1441106642 | 2011 | PDF | 256 pages | 1,2 MB
Review
"With grace and considerable erudition, Alex Schulman has reconstructed what was the most significant political concept of the Enlightenment: that social and political life could only be grounded upon an agreement between all citizens, which excluded any consideration of religious belief not matter what the basis of its claims. The great democratic revolutions which we today associate with modernity were inexorably based on the unassailable claim that the social contract could only ever be a secular one. In recent years this principle has come under attack not only from theocratic states hostile to the western liberal democracies but, even from within some of those democracies themselves, most alarmingly the United States. In world which has witnessed some of the most devastating instances of sectarian violence since the sixteenth century, The Secular Contract, is a powerfully-argued, passionately-written account of where our true heritage lies, and a reminder that we abandon it at our peril." - Anthony Pagden, Distinguished Professor of Political Science