This Life

If this life is all there is, what should we do with it? Join Swedish philosopher Martin Hägglund on an original inquiry into the deepest questions of existence, beginning with a radical declaration: 'What I do and what I love can matter to me only because I understand myself as mortal.'Through revelatory engagements with some of history's greatest philosophers, including Aristotle, St Augustine, Nietzsche, Hegel and Marx, Hägglund attacks our two great deceivers, religion and capitalism. Only by stripping away their subtle illusions can we discover the true value of our earthly freedom.Existence is revealed as a collective project: everything is at stake in what we do together, and no victory can survive us. 'The light of bliss - even when it floods your life - is always attended by the shadow of loss.' By illuminating this truth, This Life forges an existential philosophy fit for a darkening century.

Beautifully liberating ... Hägglund's fundamental secular cry seems right: since time is all we have, we must measure its preciousness in units of freedom. Nothing else will do. Once this glorious idea has taken hold, it is very hard to dislodge., A splendid primer in the importance of authentic freedom., Lucidly written, and at times beautifully so, it is unmistakably a work of philosophy... [Hägglund] wants to effect a revolutionary change in our understanding of value, in our economies and in our lives., Martin Hägglund shows with real originality why the moral concern that underlies religious faith has always been a hope for the perpetuation of life on earth. Stringent, lucid, and urgent in its appeal for a politics equal to the prospect of climate disaster, This Life is both an argument and a summons., This is a rare piece of work, the product of great intellectual strength and moral fortitude. The writing shows extraordinary range and possesses an honesty and fervor which is entirely without cynicism... Hägglund is a genuine moralist for our times, possessed of an undaunted resoluteness and a fierce commitment to intellectual probity. Maybe he's the philosophical analogue to Karl Ove Knausgaard.

Martin Hägglund is Professor of Comparative Literature and Humanities at Yale University, and a member of the Society of Fellows at Harvard University. In 2018, he received a Guggenheim fellowship. He lives in New York City.