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. About the author Martin Hägglund is Professor of Comparative Literature and Humanities at Yale University, and a member of the Society of Fellows at Harvard University. His first book in English, Radical Atheism (2008), was the subject of a conference at Cornell, a colloquium at Oxford, and a 250-page special issue of The New Centennial Review titled Living On: Of Martin Hägglund. His most recent book, Dying for Time: Proust, Woolf, Nabokov (2012), was hailed by the Los Angeles Review of Books as a "revolutionary" achievement. In 2018, he received a Guggenheim fellowship. He lives in New York City.