jonathonjones 's review for:

This Life: Secular Faith and Spiritual Freedom by Martin Hägglund

4.0

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Really a 3.5. It's challenging to rate, because I think some of the motivating questions just aren't actually that living for me (like I don't really care about religious faith and whether it is worse than so-called secular faith). Nonetheless, I found the latter half of the book, in which he is talking about Marxist thought and his vision of Democratic Socialism, to be intriguing. I was not quite convinced by his arguments, largely because they stayed so theoretical (attempting to show that Capitalism is inherently contradictory, for example). But there were many times when it made me think carefully about the things he was discussing, especially issues around how I want to be spending my life, and ways in which the current system does not allow us to ask that question very well. I particularly liked the distinction he makes regarding Free Time (as time available to pursue things that are meaningful to us) as opposed to a kind Leisure Time (largely meaningless and meant to recharge us for work).

At the end of the day, I'm left thinking that these are intriguing ideas and I would like to read more about them, probably from a less theoretical perspective.