Excerpt: /325/ Reading Club: Freedom (1)

On Martin Hägglund's This Life.

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We begin the 2023 Reading Club with the theme of FREEDOM. In this episode, we examine Martin Hägglund's arguments for secular faith presented in the first half of his book. Is Hagglund right in arguing that much of religious belief, especially in relation to morality, is actually motivated by secular faith?

Hägglund's enemy is not so much religion as the "Stoic" attempt to withdraw and detach from the temporal world. Instead we should be engaged and committed to the persons and projects we care about in this life. But does Hägglund underestimate alienation? Is his approach overly demanding?

And what about disenchantment? How would we go about re-enchanting the secular world?

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Readings:

• This Life: Why Mortality Makes Us Free, Martin Hägglund, Profile Books ––Introduction; Chapter 1 (Sections 2, 3, 4); Chapter 2 (Sections 2, 4, 6)
• From Western Marxism to Western Buddhism, Slavoj Zizek, Cabinet Magazine
• Vulnerability as Ideology, Peter Ramsay, The Northern Star