The Secular Contract The Politics of Enlightenment

The Secular Contract seeks to defend the European Enlightenment's secularization of political philosophy by promoting an understanding of Enlightenment secular liberalism and extending it to contemporary issues.

The work proposes that the Enlightenment united the secularizing trends that occurred at the time across all areas of knowledge into a "secular contract" for modern politics. It argues that this was a normatively valuable enterprise whose aims and arguments need to be recovered today, especially in light of the challenges faced by the West, including fundamentalist Christianity in the US and radical Islam in Europe.

Looking at the works of many thinkers, such as Hobbes, Jefferson, Madison, Rousseau, the book then shifts to the present day to argue for a different liberalism, as suggested by such contemporary thinkers as William Galston or Stephen Macedo. An engaging read, The Secular Contract will appeal to anyone interested in political theory and the history of ideas.

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.

1. Introduction.2. The Treaty of Atlantis: How Bacon, Hobbes, and Spinoza Laid the Groundwork For a Politics of Progress 3.  Legitimacy is History: Enlightenment Historiography and the Revision of Social Contract Theory4. American Encyclope-Deism: The Revolution and the Open Society -I5. The Well of the Caliph: The Revolution and the Open Society -II6.  Paradise Won: Kant's Secular Contract7. Slouching Toward Geneva8. Conclusion: Academic Counter-Enlightenment and the Recline of the West