The Secular Contract
The Secular Contract

Author: Alex Schulman

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2011-06-23

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 1441184678

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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.

A Secular Age
A Secular Age

Author: Charles Taylor

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2018-09-17

Total Pages: 889

ISBN-13: 0674986911

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The place of religion in society has changed profoundly in the last few centuries, particularly in the West. In what will be a defining book for our time, Taylor takes up the question of what these changes mean, and what, precisely, happens when a society becomes one in which faith is only one human possibility among others.

Religion, Spirituality and the Social Sciences
Religion, Spirituality and the Social Sciences

Author: Spalek, Basia

Publisher: Policy Press

Published: 2008-09-03

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13: 9781847420411

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"This edited collection addresses important theoretical and methodological issues to explore ways of engaging with religion and spirituality when carrying out social science research. Divided into three sections, the book examines the notion of secularism in relation to contemporary Western society, including a focus upon secularisation; explores how the values underpinning social scientific enquiry might serve to marginalise religion and spirituality; and reflects on social science research methodologies when researching religion and spirituality."--BOOK JACKET.

State Neutrality
State Neutrality

Author: Kerry O'Halloran

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2021-01-21

Total Pages: 529

ISBN-13: 1108481590

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O'Halloran provides a comparative evaluation of contemporary law as it relates to religion in six developed nations.

The Jewish Social Contract
The Jewish Social Contract

Author: David Novak

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2009-01-10

Total Pages: 284

ISBN-13: 1400824397

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The Jewish Social Contract begins by asking how a traditional Jew can participate politically and socially and in good faith in a modern democratic society, and ends by proposing a broad, inclusive notion of secularity. David Novak takes issue with the view--held by the late philosopher John Rawls and his followers--that citizens of a liberal state must, in effect, check their religion at the door when discussing politics in a public forum. Novak argues that in a "liberal democratic state, members of faith-based communities--such as tradition-minded Jews and Christians--ought to be able to adhere to the broad political framework wholly in terms of their own religious tradition and convictions, and without setting their religion aside in the public sphere. Novak shows how social contracts emerged, rooted in biblical notions of covenant, and how they developed in the rabbinic, medieval, and "modern periods. He offers suggestions as to how Jews today can best negotiate the modern social contract while calling upon non-Jewish allies to aid them in the process. The Jewish Social Contract will prove an enlightening and innovative contribution to the ongoing debate about the role of religion in liberal democracies.

Islam and the Secular State
Islam and the Secular State

Author: Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2010-03-30

Total Pages: 346

ISBN-13: 0674261445

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What should be the place of Shari‘a—Islamic religious law—in predominantly Muslim societies of the world? In this ambitious and topical book, a Muslim scholar and human rights activist envisions a positive and sustainable role for Shari‘a, based on a profound rethinking of the relationship between religion and the secular state in all societies. An-Na‘im argues that the coercive enforcement of Shari‘a by the state betrays the Qur’an’s insistence on voluntary acceptance of Islam. Just as the state should be secure from the misuse of religious authority, Shari‘a should be freed from the control of the state. State policies or legislation must be based on civic reasons accessible to citizens of all religions. Showing that throughout the history of Islam, Islam and the state have normally been separate, An-Na‘im maintains that ideas of human rights and citizenship are more consistent with Islamic principles than with claims of a supposedly Islamic state to enforce Shari‘a. In fact, he suggests, the very idea of an “Islamic state” is based on European ideas of state and law, and not Shari‘a or the Islamic tradition. Bold, pragmatic, and deeply rooted in Islamic history and theology, Islam and the Secular State offers a workable future for the place of Shari‘a in Muslim societies.

The Aesthetic Contract
The Aesthetic Contract

Author: Henry Sussman

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 1997

Total Pages: 338

ISBN-13: 9780804728430

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Ambitious in scope and innovative in concept, this book offers an overview and critique of the conventions surrounding artistic creativity and intellectual endeavor since the outset of "the broader modernity", which the author sees as beginning with the decline of feudalism and the Church. As a work of intellectual history, it suggests that art and the conventions associated with the artistic constitute a secular institution that has supplanted pre-Reformation theology. From the perspective of the "subject," modernity has entailed a heightened sense of individuation, moral conflict, and pervasive loss and disaster. Yet the pitfalls that have earmarked personal experience have taken on positive value in an artistic enterprise that aspires to be a salutary replacement for externally imposed theological dogmas. Beginning with Luther, Calvin, and Shakespeare and culminating with the Kantian notion of the artist as an "original genius," the author reconstructs the steps by which art and creative activity were installed as the redemptive values of a modernity in which human beings were forced to define knowledge and establish authority according to their own devices. In the process, the author reads passages from Plato, Proust, Donne, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Kleist, Rousseau, Melville, Wittgenstein, as well as Benjamin, as well as the graphic works of Holbein, Dürer, Mondrian, and Rothko. As a work of critical theory, The Aesthetic Contract posits an alternative model to Kant's "original genius." The author explores an understanding of art powered by the notion of the aesthetic contract, in which artists and intellectuals choose to operate within the parameters of certain explicit experiments until the contractual clauses that delimit these endeavors lose their currency or validity. As an intellectual analog to Rousseau's social contract, the aesthetic contract has allowed the modern artist to address issues of knowledge, authority, and experience once thought to fall within the domain of arbitrary, remote, and inaccessible agencies.

Contract with America
Contract with America

Author: Newt Gingrich

Publisher: Three Rivers Press

Published: 1994

Total Pages: 212

ISBN-13: 9780812925869

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The November 1994 midterm elections were a watershed event, making possible a Repbulican majority in Congress for the first time in forty years. Contract with America, by Newt Gingrich, the new Speaker of the House, Dick Armey, the new Majority Leader, and the House Republicans, charts a bold new political strategy for the entire country. The ten-point program, which forms the basis of this book, was announced in late September. It received the signed support of more than 300 GOP canditates. Their pledge: "If we break this contract, throw us out". Contract with America fleshes out the vision and provides the details of the program that swept the GOP to victory. Among the pressing issues addressed in this important book are: balancing the budget, stopping crime, reforming welfare, reinforcing families, enhancing fairness for seniors, strengthening national defense, cutting government regulations, promoting legal reform, considering term limits, and reducing taxes.

The Politics of Secularism in International Relations
The Politics of Secularism in International Relations

Author: Elizabeth Shakman Hurd

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2009-01-10

Total Pages: 261

ISBN-13: 1400828015

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Conflicts involving religion have returned to the forefront of international relations. And yet political scientists and policymakers have continued to assume that religion has long been privatized in the West. This secularist assumption ignores the contestation surrounding the category of the "secular" in international politics. The Politics of Secularism in International Relations shows why this thinking is flawed, and provides a powerful alternative. Elizabeth Shakman Hurd argues that secularist divisions between religion and politics are not fixed, as commonly assumed, but socially and historically constructed. Examining the philosophical and historical legacy of the secularist traditions that shape European and American approaches to global politics, she shows why this matters for contemporary international relations, and in particular for two critical relationships: the United States and Iran, and the European Union and Turkey. The Politics of Secularism in International Relations develops a new approach to religion and international relations that challenges realist, liberal, and constructivist assumptions that religion has been excluded from politics in the West. The first book to consider secularism as a form of political authority in its own right, it describes two forms of secularism and their far-reaching global consequences.

A Contract with the Earth
A Contract with the Earth

Author: Newt Gingrich

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2008-09-30

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 0452289920

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A bold rallying cry for conservative environmental leadership from Newt Gingrich, New York Times bestselling author of Trump and the American Future and March to the Majority. Appealing to America's core conservative readership and defying conventional thinking, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and eminent conservationist Terry L. Maple posit that the values of conservative America are aligned with the principles of conservation and "entrepreneurial environmentalism." Saving the earth is not—and cannot be—a partisan issue. The authors outline a ten-point Contract with the Earth that promotes ingenuity over rhetoric, maintaining that the expansion of "green business," new technologies, and environmental economic incentives will be the defining opportunities for the leaders of the next generation. An inspiring call to action, A Contract with the Earth offers a vision of the future that is both hopeful and achievable.