A profound, original, and accessible book that offers a new
secular vision of how we can lead our lives. Ranging from fundamental
existential questions to the most pressing social issues of our time,
This Life shows why our commitment to freedom and democracy
should lead us beyond both religion and capitalism.
In this groundbreaking book, the philosopher Martin Hägglund
challenges our received notions of faith and freedom. The faith we
need to cultivate, he argues, is not a religious faith in eternity
but a secular faith devoted to our finite life together. He shows
that all spiritual questions of freedom are inseparable from economic
and material conditions. What ultimately matters is how we treat one
another in this life, and what we do with our time together.
Hägglund develops
new existential and political principles while transforming our
understanding of spiritual life. His critique of religion takes us to
the heart of what it means to mourn our loved ones, be committed, and
care about a sustainable world. His critique of capitalism
demonstrates that we fail to sustain our democratic values because
our lives depend on wage labor. In clear and pathbreaking terms,
Hägglund explains why capitalism is inimical to our freedom, and why
we should instead pursue a novel form of democratic socialism.
In developing his
vision of an emancipated secular life, Hägglund engages with great
philosophers from Aristotle to Hegel and Marx, literary writers from
Dante to Proust and Knausgaard, political economists from Mill to
Keynes and Hayek, and religious thinkers from Augustine to
Kierkegaard and Martin Luther King, Jr. This Life gives us new
access to our past—for the sake of a different future.