The Secular Contract

Examines the secularization of political theory during the European Enlightenment and the  ramifications for current debates.

"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 a 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, UCLA and author of Worlds at War. The 2500-Year Struggle between East and West.

The Secular Contract is the perfect companion text for survey courses in political theory and intellectual history Schulman makes use of both his razor-sharp wit and his encyclopedic knowledge of contractarianism to give us a daring yet authoritative reading of the history of liberalism. Arguing for the contemporary relevance of a secularism worthy of the name, the book restores social contract theory's original audacity. --Elisabeth Ellis, Associate Professor of Political Science, Texas A&M University

Alex Schulman is an ACLS New Faculty Fellow in the Political Science Department at Duke University. He has published articles in The Cambridge Quarterly, The Journal of Religion, and Law and Literature.