Take a photo of a barcode or cover
bkam 's review for:
This Life: Why Mortality Makes Us Free
by Martin Hägglund
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.