This Life: Secular Faith and Spiritual Freedom

An ambitious two-part argument for a fully secular understanding of what makes life meaningful, with political consequences. Part One, 'Secular Faith', argues that we can care about things only because they can be lost. Eternal life, if it were possible, would leave nothing to care about or work for; our finitude is what makes love, commitment and time valuable. Hägglund develops this through readings of Augustine's Confessions, C. S. Lewis's A Grief Observed, Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling and Karl Ove Knausgaard's My Struggle, arguing that religious faith finally devalues this life. Part Two, 'Spiritual Freedom', asks what we should do with our finite time. Drawing on Hegel and Marx, he argues that capitalism measures value by labour time, and so cannot recognise free time as the true measure of wealth. He proposes a form of democratic socialism and ends with Martin Luther King Jr's last campaigns for economic justice. Critics have questioned his account of religious faith and the practicality of his economic proposals.

It joins the question of how to live a meaningful finite life to the question of how society organises work and time, and it is a strong contemporary case for secular meaning.