Take a photo of a barcode or cover
4.07 AVERAGE
4.07 AVERAGE
One of the most important works I have ever read, and during the most trying time of my life. I had never heard of the book, nor its author, before it practically leapt off the store shelf and straight into my heart. My view of life and society has been strengthened, while my view of freedom has been enlightened. Thank you, Martin.
challenging
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
Despite its merits, This Life is poorly argued, repetitive, entirely theoretical and lacking any empirical grounding, and narrow-minded. It is an ambitious book that attempts to set out a rigorous anti-religious and anti-capitalist philosophy of life. It is hard not to applaud the author for his sweeping vision -- he's essentially arguing in favor of a dramatic reshaping of global life -- even if I found his execution tremendously flawed.
Hägglund's biggest strength is his detailed and insightful readings of Augustine, Kierkegaard, C.S. Lewis, Martin Luther King, Karl Ove Knausgaard, Hegel, and Marx. On their own, I think they are all interesting and worth reading. But within the context of this book they are part of the book's failure.
Hägglund has two central claims in the book. In the first half of the book he makes a case for what he calls "secular faith" (as opposed to "religious faith"). His argument has some merit but it is also displays all of his flaws. First, what is "religious faith"?
Despite this claim that he is speaking about "all world religions" Hägglund defines it, basically, as a belief in austerely intellectual heaven as Augustine, Kierkegaard, and C.S. Lewis conceived of it, a heaven where individuals cease to exist in any meaningful sense and spend their eternity contemplating the divinity of god. Theirs is hardly the definitive, universally accepted version of Christianity. To say nothing of all the other religions on the planet.
Buddhism, with its concept of a detached nirvana is close enough that he has a dozen or so references to it. There are a mere four references to Hinduism in the book, none of them detailed. Four to Islam. Three to Judaism. None to Shintoism, Confucianism, or the wide variety of indigenous religions. There is a single Buddhist author investigated (Steven Collins and his book Nirvana). Every other author discussed in the book is Christian. This is what I mean by "narrow-minded".
Slowly, eventually, Hägglund makes that when he talks about "religious faith" he has a very specific meaning in mind that will probably surprise most religious people.
(Notice the dismissive language, which we'll come back to in a second.)
So what is Hägglund's "secular faith" set against this? Simply that we can't really care for something unless it is fragile and at risk of loss. We have to "have faith" that our spouse will love us back. We are in "fear & trembling" that our children will die and be lost to us forever. Hägglund makes the good point (hardly unique to him) that even the amazingly devout -- Augustine, C.S. Lewis, Martin Luther -- experience grief when a loved one die. Which makes no sense in the context of their faith. They should be happy that their loved one has gone to join God in heaven. Hägglund makes his point using Barack Obama's speech in the wake of a school shooting in America:
But here is where Hägglund has created his own biggest stumbling block. He is essentially arguing that, in reality, virtually everything we do is actually predicated on "secular faith" and not "religious faith".
But if we accept this...then what's the point of the entire first half of the book? 99% of the time we are already acting with "secular faith" as our motivation. So he's not trying to "convert" anyone. Is Hägglund just trying to get us to admit that? Why does it matter if we do or don't admit it? Is he trying to get us to move from 99% secular faith to 100% secular faith? Is there some actual, concrete benefit? What are we missing out by keeping that 1% religious faith.
And this is where the lack of any empiricism in the book hurts it because he's unable to point to any real world effects. Like, okay, we all admit we're living based on secular faith and then switch to 100% secular faith. What happens? What's better?
The closest thing to an answer to this is Hägglund's critical analysis of Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle which "can be read as a contemporary response to Augustine". But here's where Hägglund's repetitiveness comes in. He spends over 30 pages (97-128) quoting long sections from Knausgaard’s book, all of which amounts to us being told over and over and over again: Look, a guy wrote a book about how the fragility & finitude of something is what gives it beauty and meaning. First I'll quote a passage about his first love. See? Now I'll quote another passage. See? Ready for another?
Ultimately I think that Hägglund does make a good point. Any philosophical or religious conception of eternity seems misguided. By attempting to remove uncertainty and doubt and fear it would remove anything that is recognizable as human. Worse, it devalues all the things we actually care about in our lives. What gives things value is the very fact that they are fragile and can be lost. We worry about the environment because it can be destroyed. 100 years ago when we didn't think it could be lost, we didn't value it.
But that's a point that can be made in 10 or 20 pages...not the 150 Hägglund takes. I think his biggest failing is he goes "deep" instead of "wide". The entire first half of the book is essentially rests on just two things: his reading of Augustine and his reading of Knausgaard. Both are white men from the Western, Christian tradition. If he wants to convince us of the universality of his point, he'd do better to cut down the length discussions of Augustine and Knausgaard and substitute in a plethora of diverse writers.
This review is already lengthy and I've only talked about the first half of the book, where he makes his argument for "secular faith". In the second half of the book he makes his case for throwing out capitalism and building a Marxist economy.
In this section Hägglund makes good points that capitalism sets the definition of "wealth" as money rather than free time.
Despite the resonance of individual lines like this, most will find his ultimate conclusion hopelessly naive and vague.
That's right, he's saying that even in a post-capitalist utopia there will (obviously) be drudge work that needs to be done. Someone will need to clean the toilets. And we will be "intrinsically motivated" to help clean the toilets. And the cleaning roster will (somehow) be determined democratically. This is where he really needed to descend from ivory tower theorizing and engage with real empiricism and real psychology of real human beings.
Despite giving this 2-stars I don't regret reading this. Hägglund's book -- more than anything else I've read recently "made me think". And sometimes that's what you want from a book. I didn't always (usually) agree with his conclusions. But he's trying to start a discussion about something meaningful -- not just what the President tweeted last night -- and I appreciated that. I'm not sure I would exactly recommend this to many people. It is only 300 pages but it is dense and not exactly "fun reading". I guess, in the end, I'd leave it as "if you're the kind of person who thinks you would like a book like this...then you might like this book".
Hägglund's biggest strength is his detailed and insightful readings of Augustine, Kierkegaard, C.S. Lewis, Martin Luther King, Karl Ove Knausgaard, Hegel, and Marx. On their own, I think they are all interesting and worth reading. But within the context of this book they are part of the book's failure.
Hägglund has two central claims in the book. In the first half of the book he makes a case for what he calls "secular faith" (as opposed to "religious faith"). His argument has some merit but it is also displays all of his flaws. First, what is "religious faith"?
All world religions (Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Islam, and Christianity) hold that the highest form of existence or the most desirable form of life is eternal rather than finite.
Despite this claim that he is speaking about "all world religions" Hägglund defines it, basically, as a belief in austerely intellectual heaven as Augustine, Kierkegaard, and C.S. Lewis conceived of it, a heaven where individuals cease to exist in any meaningful sense and spend their eternity contemplating the divinity of god. Theirs is hardly the definitive, universally accepted version of Christianity. To say nothing of all the other religions on the planet.
Buddhism, with its concept of a detached nirvana is close enough that he has a dozen or so references to it. There are a mere four references to Hinduism in the book, none of them detailed. Four to Islam. Three to Judaism. None to Shintoism, Confucianism, or the wide variety of indigenous religions. There is a single Buddhist author investigated (Steven Collins and his book Nirvana). Every other author discussed in the book is Christian. This is what I mean by "narrow-minded".
Slowly, eventually, Hägglund makes that when he talks about "religious faith" he has a very specific meaning in mind that will probably surprise most religious people.
If I am motivated by religious faith, the goal of my striving is to rest in peace.
The common denominator for what I have called “religious” ideals is the goal of being absolved from negativity, absolved from the pain of loss.
The infinite resignation of Religiousness A is thus the common denominator for all forms of religious faith worthy of the name.
(Notice the dismissive language, which we'll come back to in a second.)
While religious faith is exposed to doubt and uncertainty, its goal is to reach a state in which "the element of distance is overcome and with it uncertainty, doubt, courage and risk."
So what is Hägglund's "secular faith" set against this? Simply that we can't really care for something unless it is fragile and at risk of loss. We have to "have faith" that our spouse will love us back. We are in "fear & trembling" that our children will die and be lost to us forever. Hägglund makes the good point (hardly unique to him) that even the amazingly devout -- Augustine, C.S. Lewis, Martin Luther -- experience grief when a loved one die. Which makes no sense in the context of their faith. They should be happy that their loved one has gone to join God in heaven. Hägglund makes his point using Barack Obama's speech in the wake of a school shooting in America:
Nevertheless, the religious faith that is supposed to provide consolation is predicated on a denial or relativization of the irreplaceable loss. Thus, at a memorial service for the victims in Newtown, President Barack Obama delivered the following sermon: “‘Let the little children come to me,’ Jesus said, ‘and do not hinder them. For such belongs to the kingdom of Heaven.’ God has called them all home.” This religious faith—if one were to believe in it—would fundamentally alter the response to the shootings in Newtown. The children who were killed would not be irreplaceable, but rather transferable to a higher existence. Furthermore, the killings themselves would ultimately not be a tragedy but a transitional stage on the way toward God calling the children “home” to heaven. To be sure, this particular belief—that the slaying of children in the end amounts to God calling them home to heaven—may seem offensive even to many who take themselves to be endorsing religious faith. But one should then bear in mind that a similar relativization of death is entailed by any religious faith in redemption.
But here is where Hägglund has created his own biggest stumbling block. He is essentially arguing that, in reality, virtually everything we do is actually predicated on "secular faith" and not "religious faith".
My aim is to show that secular faith lies at the heart of what matters, even for those who claim to have religious faith, such as Martin Luther when mourning the death of his daughter Magdalena and C. S. Lewis when mourning the death of his wife, Joy Davidman.
Those who claim to be Christian but still care about the fate of their finite lives, Kierkegaard chastises for lacking a living religious faith.
But if we accept this...then what's the point of the entire first half of the book? 99% of the time we are already acting with "secular faith" as our motivation. So he's not trying to "convert" anyone. Is Hägglund just trying to get us to admit that? Why does it matter if we do or don't admit it? Is he trying to get us to move from 99% secular faith to 100% secular faith? Is there some actual, concrete benefit? What are we missing out by keeping that 1% religious faith.
And this is where the lack of any empiricism in the book hurts it because he's unable to point to any real world effects. Like, okay, we all admit we're living based on secular faith and then switch to 100% secular faith. What happens? What's better?
The closest thing to an answer to this is Hägglund's critical analysis of Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle which "can be read as a contemporary response to Augustine". But here's where Hägglund's repetitiveness comes in. He spends over 30 pages (97-128) quoting long sections from Knausgaard’s book, all of which amounts to us being told over and over and over again: Look, a guy wrote a book about how the fragility & finitude of something is what gives it beauty and meaning. First I'll quote a passage about his first love. See? Now I'll quote another passage. See? Ready for another?
Ultimately I think that Hägglund does make a good point. Any philosophical or religious conception of eternity seems misguided. By attempting to remove uncertainty and doubt and fear it would remove anything that is recognizable as human. Worse, it devalues all the things we actually care about in our lives. What gives things value is the very fact that they are fragile and can be lost. We worry about the environment because it can be destroyed. 100 years ago when we didn't think it could be lost, we didn't value it.
But that's a point that can be made in 10 or 20 pages...not the 150 Hägglund takes. I think his biggest failing is he goes "deep" instead of "wide". The entire first half of the book is essentially rests on just two things: his reading of Augustine and his reading of Knausgaard. Both are white men from the Western, Christian tradition. If he wants to convince us of the universality of his point, he'd do better to cut down the length discussions of Augustine and Knausgaard and substitute in a plethora of diverse writers.
This review is already lengthy and I've only talked about the first half of the book, where he makes his argument for "secular faith". In the second half of the book he makes his case for throwing out capitalism and building a Marxist economy.
The deepest reason capitalism is a contradictory social form is that it treats the negative measure of value as though it were the positive measure of value and thereby treats the means of economic life as though they were the end of economic life.
In this section Hägglund makes good points that capitalism sets the definition of "wealth" as money rather than free time.
The point of wealth under capitalism is to accumulate more wealth, not to use it as a means for a meaningful end.
Despite the resonance of individual lines like this, most will find his ultimate conclusion hopelessly naive and vague.
The idea, however, is that we will be intrinsically motivated to participate in social labor when we can recognize that the social production is for the sake of the common good and our own freedom to lead a life.
That's right, he's saying that even in a post-capitalist utopia there will (obviously) be drudge work that needs to be done. Someone will need to clean the toilets. And we will be "intrinsically motivated" to help clean the toilets. And the cleaning roster will (somehow) be determined democratically. This is where he really needed to descend from ivory tower theorizing and engage with real empiricism and real psychology of real human beings.
Despite giving this 2-stars I don't regret reading this. Hägglund's book -- more than anything else I've read recently "made me think". And sometimes that's what you want from a book. I didn't always (usually) agree with his conclusions. But he's trying to start a discussion about something meaningful -- not just what the President tweeted last night -- and I appreciated that. I'm not sure I would exactly recommend this to many people. It is only 300 pages but it is dense and not exactly "fun reading". I guess, in the end, I'd leave it as "if you're the kind of person who thinks you would like a book like this...then you might like this book".
This is a book that is good enough to be worth reading despite the fact that it is often repetitive and sometimes infuriating. Hägglund should have written two books, the first about religion and the second about socialism. If he had, I'd have given the first one 2 stars, and the second one 4.
I'll start with the second half, which is excellent, and the reason you should read this book. It's a critique of capitalism and a close reading of Marx. It focuses on the problem that capitalism does not place any value on free time. So any increased productivity, automation or efficiency does not reduce time spent working (as is probably obvious from most jobs), but is either converted into profits for capital, or (if large enough) results in unemployment. The gains are never realised in any meaningful sense, because they never result in the time to pursue goals within the realm of what he calls "spiritual freedom." This half of the book is a profound and important analysis.
You should probably stop reading here and read the (second half of the) book instead. But if you want to know what I dislike about his views on religion, here it is:
The first half is a bit of a struggle, particularly if you have any religious/contemplative/meditative practice. In it, Hägglund misunderstands Stoicism, misrepresents Buddhism, and misreads Kierkegaard (whose view of faith is essentially identical with Hägglund's "secular faith," the point of both being that you can't know in advance that your actions won't be harmful/vain).
I agree with his overall argument in this section, which is that life is meaningful only because of its finitude, and that spiritual freedom requires us to commit ourselves to finite things even in full knowledge they won't last, but he spends much of his time pointlessly attacking a straw man version of religion. He believes all religion to be essentially eschatological and seems to know nothing of religious pragmatism, the history of Buddhist thought, or why people practice religions. He should read Tanya Luhrmann's When God Talks Back, which provides a good account of how even (maybe especially) the most extreme esoteric/charismatic/mystical practices have benefits that a materialist like Hägglund ought to be willing to do anything for — including become religious. If he really cares about material well-being, religion has all sorts of benefits. That these might in principle be replicated in secular equivalents is a possibility but not a guarantee.
His readings throughout the book are detailed enough, though, that even when he's completely wrong (which, especially in the first half, he often is) he quotes enough of the source material that you still get wisdom from those thinkers. I am not saying this because I'm religious in the way he imagines; I am as suspicious as Marx was of organised religion, and I have no religious beliefs. I do, however, find practical wisdom, i.e., things that work in practice, in the philosophies and religions which he regards as essentially epistemological targets to be torn down. Of course Skepticism/Stoicism won't hold up against rational attacks; they are not fundamentally about reason, and Skepticism is opposed to knowledge itself. Instead, they are claims about how best to live, and how to live with a mind that is not rational, but thinks that it is.
If you meditate, reading the first half is a bit like being an athlete while Hägglund, who has never left his couch, relentlessly lectures you about the dangers of exercise. He does not seem to understand the goal of insight practices, he only understands straw-man soteriology or empty eschatologies, or random metaphysics made up as a side-aspect of some of these practices, which he mistakes for the real thing. (He is constantly asserting that the monotheistic religions only care about the afterlife, though he ignores Judaism, and that Nirvana is the only point of Buddhism, ignoring the fact that the Bodhisattva ideal explicitly renounces this.) He is fixated on belief, and doesn't seem to realise that belief only matters insofar as it affects behaviour, and he definitely does not prove that there is any link (my view is that rationalisation/belief follow action, not vice versa).
He entirely ignores religious practice, which are the reason these traditions exist and continue to be... well, practiced. In this ignorance he seems to regard nirvana as quite attainable, ataraxia and apatheia goals so closeby that one might arrive at them accidentally, and not the unreachable ideals that they are. He assumes that all religious people think constantly of eschatology, as if their every action is based on their thinking of heaven and hell, and he believes that they don't value their communities or rituals except as instrumental actions towards a deity. Looking at the contradictions which exist in the writing of Augustine, Martin Luther, and Augustine, which Hägglund seems to regard as a good idea because they are so religious, is, on the contrary, a bad idea because they are so religious. Of course they faced serious questions and contradictions that laypeople would never face. It's all quite insulting for both agnostic spiritual practitioners and for the religious alike, showing ignorance of both sides.
I also fundamentally disagree with his belief that there is a clean division between instrumental and ultimate goals. He regards things done "for their own sake" as superior to those done for some other purpose. To me this is a spectrum, and while I agree that capitalism tends to instrumentalise things in a damaging way, I think you should always be skeptical about any reasons you give to yourself or anyone else about why you are doing something. He purports to be doing philosophy for its own sake. I'm sure that is largely true, but if it were truly an end in itself, then he would have given the book away for free at the end (or burned it). I'm not saying he should have done either of these things. I'm just saying that while it's laudable to focus your time on things done "mostly" for their own sake, this is never a pure proposition; motives are always mixed.
At the end he comes back around to Hegel and Martin Luther King, Jr., and reiterates much of the book. I hope I haven't entirely put you off it, because it is a good book. But I just can't see why it's one book and not two.
I'll start with the second half, which is excellent, and the reason you should read this book. It's a critique of capitalism and a close reading of Marx. It focuses on the problem that capitalism does not place any value on free time. So any increased productivity, automation or efficiency does not reduce time spent working (as is probably obvious from most jobs), but is either converted into profits for capital, or (if large enough) results in unemployment. The gains are never realised in any meaningful sense, because they never result in the time to pursue goals within the realm of what he calls "spiritual freedom." This half of the book is a profound and important analysis.
You should probably stop reading here and read the (second half of the) book instead. But if you want to know what I dislike about his views on religion, here it is:
The first half is a bit of a struggle, particularly if you have any religious/contemplative/meditative practice. In it, Hägglund misunderstands Stoicism, misrepresents Buddhism, and misreads Kierkegaard (whose view of faith is essentially identical with Hägglund's "secular faith," the point of both being that you can't know in advance that your actions won't be harmful/vain).
I agree with his overall argument in this section, which is that life is meaningful only because of its finitude, and that spiritual freedom requires us to commit ourselves to finite things even in full knowledge they won't last, but he spends much of his time pointlessly attacking a straw man version of religion. He believes all religion to be essentially eschatological and seems to know nothing of religious pragmatism, the history of Buddhist thought, or why people practice religions. He should read Tanya Luhrmann's When God Talks Back, which provides a good account of how even (maybe especially) the most extreme esoteric/charismatic/mystical practices have benefits that a materialist like Hägglund ought to be willing to do anything for — including become religious. If he really cares about material well-being, religion has all sorts of benefits. That these might in principle be replicated in secular equivalents is a possibility but not a guarantee.
His readings throughout the book are detailed enough, though, that even when he's completely wrong (which, especially in the first half, he often is) he quotes enough of the source material that you still get wisdom from those thinkers. I am not saying this because I'm religious in the way he imagines; I am as suspicious as Marx was of organised religion, and I have no religious beliefs. I do, however, find practical wisdom, i.e., things that work in practice, in the philosophies and religions which he regards as essentially epistemological targets to be torn down. Of course Skepticism/Stoicism won't hold up against rational attacks; they are not fundamentally about reason, and Skepticism is opposed to knowledge itself. Instead, they are claims about how best to live, and how to live with a mind that is not rational, but thinks that it is.
If you meditate, reading the first half is a bit like being an athlete while Hägglund, who has never left his couch, relentlessly lectures you about the dangers of exercise. He does not seem to understand the goal of insight practices, he only understands straw-man soteriology or empty eschatologies, or random metaphysics made up as a side-aspect of some of these practices, which he mistakes for the real thing. (He is constantly asserting that the monotheistic religions only care about the afterlife, though he ignores Judaism, and that Nirvana is the only point of Buddhism, ignoring the fact that the Bodhisattva ideal explicitly renounces this.) He is fixated on belief, and doesn't seem to realise that belief only matters insofar as it affects behaviour, and he definitely does not prove that there is any link (my view is that rationalisation/belief follow action, not vice versa).
He entirely ignores religious practice, which are the reason these traditions exist and continue to be... well, practiced. In this ignorance he seems to regard nirvana as quite attainable, ataraxia and apatheia goals so closeby that one might arrive at them accidentally, and not the unreachable ideals that they are. He assumes that all religious people think constantly of eschatology, as if their every action is based on their thinking of heaven and hell, and he believes that they don't value their communities or rituals except as instrumental actions towards a deity. Looking at the contradictions which exist in the writing of Augustine, Martin Luther, and Augustine, which Hägglund seems to regard as a good idea because they are so religious, is, on the contrary, a bad idea because they are so religious. Of course they faced serious questions and contradictions that laypeople would never face. It's all quite insulting for both agnostic spiritual practitioners and for the religious alike, showing ignorance of both sides.
I also fundamentally disagree with his belief that there is a clean division between instrumental and ultimate goals. He regards things done "for their own sake" as superior to those done for some other purpose. To me this is a spectrum, and while I agree that capitalism tends to instrumentalise things in a damaging way, I think you should always be skeptical about any reasons you give to yourself or anyone else about why you are doing something. He purports to be doing philosophy for its own sake. I'm sure that is largely true, but if it were truly an end in itself, then he would have given the book away for free at the end (or burned it). I'm not saying he should have done either of these things. I'm just saying that while it's laudable to focus your time on things done "mostly" for their own sake, this is never a pure proposition; motives are always mixed.
At the end he comes back around to Hegel and Martin Luther King, Jr., and reiterates much of the book. I hope I haven't entirely put you off it, because it is a good book. But I just can't see why it's one book and not two.
3.5; if this were 100-150 pages shorter it would have really great! philosophically v engaging & v interesting though
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced
In this book Swedish philosopher Martin Hagglund discusses the effect having a finite lifespan has on how we determine our priorities and live our lives. Basically, since our time is limited, we should focus on maximizing the freedom of how we spend that time. This includes everything from our daily lives to our economic systems. This Life is more "philosophical" than I usually read but I enjoyed it and it gave me a lot to think on.
hopeful
informative
reflective
slow-paced
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
This is a book about atheism, but it would be wrong to group it with books by Dawkins, Harris, or Hitchens. Where popular books on atheism largely focus on ridiculing the irrationality and lack of empirical evidence supporting religious belief, or casting it in the causal role of various atrocities, Hägglund has a more constructive project in mind. As he writes late in the book, echoing Marx: "If we merely criticized religious beliefs as illusions—without being committed to overcoming the forms of social injustice that motivate these illusions—the critique of region would be empty and patronizing. The task is rather to transform our social conditions in such a way that people no longer need to have recourse to the opium of religion and can affirmatively recognize the irreplaceable value of their own lives."
His argument follows in two parts. The first part seeks to invert a the common assertion by the religious that without some higher order or transcendence, there is no basis for a moral or meaningful life. Hägglund argues that the opposite is true: eternity renders our temporary mortal lives inconsequential in comparison. Only in realizing that our lives are impermanent, that wasted time can never be recovered, and that death is a permanent end, does what we do have real stakes. Committing oneself to undertakings and to people bounded by this risk and impermanence is what he defines as "secular faith".
The second part, argues that the implication of this outlook is that our goal should be the expansion of "spiritual freedom": the freedom to ask ourselves not just what we ought to to do with our time, but if we ought to do what we supposedly ought to do. From this perspective, the collective wealth of a society is the degree to which people have the time and ability to do so. This concept of wealth and value is incompatible with capitalism. (My brain being math-addled, I would say that capitalism optimizes the wrong objective function.) Contrary to Keynes' predictions, capitalism will never produce a 15-hour work week, and social-democratic redistributive policies will always be limited by arguments that they diminish the wealth they seek to redistribute. Only under some form of democratic socialism, where true social wealth is strived towards, Hägglund argues, will we get free.
Along the way, we get some deep readings of Kierkegaard, Knausgaard, Hegel, Marx, Martin Luther, and Martin Luther King Jr., among many others. The book doesn't assume a deep philosophical background, but neither is it a breezy polemic typical of atheist-lit. It demands something of the reader, but it is profound and very moving in parts.
His argument follows in two parts. The first part seeks to invert a the common assertion by the religious that without some higher order or transcendence, there is no basis for a moral or meaningful life. Hägglund argues that the opposite is true: eternity renders our temporary mortal lives inconsequential in comparison. Only in realizing that our lives are impermanent, that wasted time can never be recovered, and that death is a permanent end, does what we do have real stakes. Committing oneself to undertakings and to people bounded by this risk and impermanence is what he defines as "secular faith".
The second part, argues that the implication of this outlook is that our goal should be the expansion of "spiritual freedom": the freedom to ask ourselves not just what we ought to to do with our time, but if we ought to do what we supposedly ought to do. From this perspective, the collective wealth of a society is the degree to which people have the time and ability to do so. This concept of wealth and value is incompatible with capitalism. (My brain being math-addled, I would say that capitalism optimizes the wrong objective function.) Contrary to Keynes' predictions, capitalism will never produce a 15-hour work week, and social-democratic redistributive policies will always be limited by arguments that they diminish the wealth they seek to redistribute. Only under some form of democratic socialism, where true social wealth is strived towards, Hägglund argues, will we get free.
Along the way, we get some deep readings of Kierkegaard, Knausgaard, Hegel, Marx, Martin Luther, and Martin Luther King Jr., among many others. The book doesn't assume a deep philosophical background, but neither is it a breezy polemic typical of atheist-lit. It demands something of the reader, but it is profound and very moving in parts.