miguelf 's review for:

This Life: Secular Faith and Spiritual Freedom by Martin Hägglund

3.0

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Enjoyment of this work might depend on one’s level of self-identified spirituality, and also one’s interest in undergraduate level philosophy. If both are very high this is going to be an intriguing read, but if not one might struggle a bit. Not sure if it was the particular translation from Swedish, but the use of the word ‘beloved’ in the first half of the book was difficult to digest as often as it was uttered – perhaps if one turns it into a drinking game every time it’s mentioned it would go down easier? The second half of the book focusing on social democratic aspects was more interesting, and yet the musings on Marx and Hegel were just not as satisfying as I would have hoped. I would pick up another book by Hägglund based on reading this, but I would wish it would be a bit more concise.