This Life: Secular Faith and Spiritual Freedom (Unabridged)
-
- $19.99
-
- $19.99
Publisher Description
Winner of the René Wellek Prize
Named a Best Book of the Year by The Guardian, The Millions, and The Sydney Morning Herald
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.
Customer Reviews
We Are All Interconnected
Quite a dense, but important read. This really speaks to where we are in America right now. It leaves me with a few questions, though. I will defend your right to believe as you see fit, believe what you believe is “true, good, and just,” even if I completely disagree with those believes, even if those beliefs are not my own. It is the American way. Will you extend the same constitutional courtesy to me? I look like you. Would your answer be different if I didn’t? I talk like you. Would your answer be different if I didn’t? I fear the answer in modern America is a resounding no to the first and even more hostile to the second and third as we currently stand.