Review of This Life by Martin Hägglund

• "The modern labor movement enriches me and all my friends through the growing light of recognition. We understand that we are no longer the anvil, but rather the hammer tham forms the future of our children, and that feeling is worth more than gold." This is an example of spiritual freedom, where one realizes that one can be the subject of our history and not subject to our history. This is one of the key idas behind Marx's notion of emancipation.
• "Economic matters are not abstract but concern the most general and concrete questions of what we do with our time.
• "If you cannot see yourself in the purpose of your occupation, then your labor time is alienated, even if your job entails a high salary and/or great social prestige". In other words, even if objectively everything is good, you can still feel alienated. There is an obvious difference between someone working in a sweatshop and someone working as a vice president in an investment bank, but from Marx's point of view all these issues are connected. No one is really free unless everyone is free.
• "That those who are enslaved or live in poverty may need faith in God to carry on with their lives is not a reason to promopte religious faith but a reason to abolish slavery and poverty". Or, as he also said: "Religion is the opium of the people". Martin argues that secular faith is indispensable for progressive politics. If this life is it, this matters. If this life is just a temporary existence before salvation is does not.

• "The goal of Stoicism is to overcome such vulnerability and attain peace of mind". The

vulnerability in this case refers to opening yourself up to grief, pain, joy etc. Martin argues that being overcome by grief or elated by joy follows from believing in the value of the thing that is lost or received, respectively. The stoic wants to overcome these feelings, i.e. the fearfulness or the hopefulness, as they are out of our control.

• "This [the belief that life is worth lifing] is a matter of faith because we cannot prove that

life is worth living despite all the suffering it entails". If we didn't believe that life is worth living, "we would be indifferent to the quality of our lives and unmoved by anything that happens". Why does Martin say this? You would still want to avoid things like physical pain?

• C.S Lewis writes that "This fate [no longer feeling the pain of having lost his wife] wold seem to

me the worst of all, to reach a state in which my years of love and marriage should appear in retrospect a charming episode - like a holiday - that had briefly interrupted my interminable life… Thus she would die to me a second time; a worse bereavement than the first. Anything but that". This reminds me of the episode of "Louie" where the doctor says that being in pain due to love lost is the good part!

• "It is hard to have patience with people who say, 'There is no Death'or 'Death doesn't

matter'. There is death and whatever is matters". C.S. Lewis again shows secular faith as he says that mortal life matters.

• "There is never a moment in which the song is present to you. You can sing it only by retaining

the notes that have passed away, while anticipating the notes still to come. Even each individual tone is never present", or, as in the words of Alan Watts: life is a dance. The point isn't to reach the end, but to enjoy the dance while it lasts.

• "Out of your heart you believe in a heart that is not yours". Augustine provides an account of

necessary uncertainty of secular faith. As one depends on others in order to live and to flourish, one must keep faith in friends and family, but there will always be room for uncertainty as, at the end of the day, one can never be certain that one is loved back.

• With religious faith the ultimate concern is to have no concern. The goal of striving is to rest

in peace and be free from all care. In contrast, when motivated by secular faith the goal of striving is to be concerned! Even in a perfect world I would still be concerned since that world can be lost so one must always keep striving. This reminds me of the book "When Breath becomes Air", which says that one can never reach perfection, but that life as about striving towards it.

• "I cannot comprehend the power of my memory since I cannot even call myself myself apart from

it". Augustine places a profound emphasis on memory and says that his memory is what makes himself hold together over time.

• "When we get used to seeing something we love, we tend no longer to notice its details or marvel

at its existence. Likewise, when we get used to living with someone we love, we run the risk of taking him or her for granted and no longer appreciating the unique qualities of the beloved." Both Marcel Proust and Knausgaard strives to transform our relation to time. Don't let the habit and routine of everyday life take away the wonder and delight of such a normal life. One way to deal with this is to reflect on loss as there is no guarantee of another day. In general, we are constantly doing things for the last time, but we normally do not know until after. For example, Mommo og Bossen are getting older and each christmas might be the last. However, this is also the case for all friends and family. (usually) does not know when

• The role of art is to make us feel what it means that we are going to die. We all know it, but to

really know it is something else.

• Loving someone (or somethin) is never accomplished, but must be sustained. This can always fail,

with joy giving way to tedium, loving care compromised by indifference or frustration, and the sense of wonder lost in deadening habit. Remember Louie CK's words: the world is an amazing place and everything is interesting.

• "Death is the background against which life can light up as something cherished and irreplaceable".
• In Mein Kampf, there is an I, a we and a they, but there is no you.
• "Fest blikket!"

• Life can only be understood backwards, but must be lived forwards - Kierkegaard. You are not a

stable essence, but always existing temporally. You are always in the process of becoming that may transform the sense of who you are.

• Your commitment is not decided once and for all, but is something that must be sustained. Only you

can decide whether you actually have put yourself at stake in what you are doing. Do you care?

• About Kierkegaard's knight of faith Hägglund argues that by destroying his ability to be in

despair, he is also destroying his ability to care about anyone or anything that is finite. Kierkegaard understands that one must continuously sustain a belief in god, but he is also a proponent of religious faith. He argues that anyone who cares about their finite lives aren't proper Christians. If you claim to believe, but it does not actually shape how you think and feel you are not really believing.

• Abraham is Kierkegaard's hero (not personally, but in the sense that he truly believes in God). If

Abraham would waver or doubt God, even for a moment, when sacrificing his only son he would not truly love God.

• "The practice of detachment is a movement of infinite resignation, which requires that you

sacrifice your for the finite in favor of the eternal".

• Dostoevsky famously claimed that without God everything is permitted. However, Kierkegaard shows

in "Fear of Trembling" that it is the opposite. If there is a God for whom everything is possible, anything can be permitted; even killing your only child for no reason other than God's command.

• "We are like sailors who have to reubild their ship on the open sea, without every being able to dismantle it in dry dock". This is Otto Neurath's boat
• The demands of different practical identities, e.g. the identity as a father and the identity as a political activist, might come into conflict. How one responds to this conflict is a question of priorities. This ordering is what Martin refers to as a person's existential identity
• How should I spend my time? This is the question that underlies all normative considerations, since what I do with my time is what I do what my life.
• The traits of spiritual freedom are: (1) the purposes of life are treated as normative rather than as natural. I am acting not simply for the sake of preserving my life or the life of my species. (2) The ability of a person to bear a negative self-relation, which means that one can experience the pain of failing to live up to ones identities/standards. (3) The third treait os the ability to question how I spend my time.
• "Collins is here on the verge of understanding that eternal salvation is inseparable from death". Martin argues that the longing for eternal salvation is the same as an aspiration to end one's life. One does not continue one's own life in heaven or when achieving nirvana. This is a modern construct.

• "The actual free labor of composing is 'the most damned seriousness' (verdammster Ernst) and 'the most intense effort' (intensivste Anstrengung) because you are at stake in what you do". For Marx composing is not composing music, but any activity in which you identify and are freely committed (writing, building a community, political activism, being a father etc.). Who we are is inseparable from what we do and how we do it.
• There is a difference between valuing something and believing something is valuable. If I value something I'm willing to spend my finite time on them. For example, I believe medicine and the study of it is valuable, but it does not mean that I'm willing to be a doctor. However, if I value the life of my child I might be willing to give up my own life for the sake of my child.
• In order to be free I have to be able to ask myself what is worth doing with my time. This question only makes sense if you believe life is too short (and definitely not if you believe it is infinite). This scarcity makes the question of how to spend time meaningful.
• The more of my lifetime I'm willing to spend on something, the more I value it. Hence, finite lifetime is the originary measure of value.
• The realm of necessity and the realm of freedom and the distinction between the two is never settled once and for all, but we must make it. If everything I do are just seen as means, e.g. done in order to maintain my life, I'm not living as my life has no purpose internal to its own activities.
• Hegel says that the Idea of Freedom must be wirklich, which requires that we sustain institutions that recognize the freedom of everyone to lead their own lives. Hegel emphasizes that "the Idea of freemdom is truly present only in the state", by which he means that an actual free society is one where we can recognize our commitment to the common good as the condition of possibility of our own freedom. We can't see the state as coerced and forced upon us, but something we commit to and that we can contest and transform.
• "To be wealthy is to be able to engage in the question of what to do on Monday morning, rather than being forced to go to work in order to survive". Bob Dylan said it well: "A man is a success if he can wake up, go to bed and in between does whatever he wants to do". There are of course many stages inbetween the two extremes, but if you're forced to work for your survival you are not completely free.

In general, this chapter contains the most questionable statements about capitalism, e.g. that if someone buys something cheaply and sells it for a profit later then this is a zero-sum game. I don't think so, the whole point is that the economy allows for mutually beneficial trades. However, I do find the criticism of the notion of value interesting and the idea that value is created by the amount of socially necessary labour required, as opposed to the amount of socially necessary labor that is reduced through technology and innovation.

• "To be free is not to be free from normative constraints, but to be free to negotiate, transform and challenge those constraints on the practical identities in light of which we lead our lives". Sebastian Junger had a similar saying in the podcast with Tim Ferriss that there is no such thing as complete freedom. A man living on the frontier is free from paying taxes and other obligations imposed by the society he left, but he also needs to bear arms at all times. Who is more free? It depends on you.
• Technology should not be seen as something that alienates us from a natural form of labor or primitive communism. Such forms of nostalgia are misguided and ignores Marx's fundamental insight that the commitment to social freedom for all became possible because of capitalism! In other words, technology is good.
• Martin discusses Hayek's paper on "The Use of Knowledge in Society". Martin argues that Hayek's view of the market is misguided since any individual capitalist is concerned with maximizing profit rather than the optimal allocation of resources. I think he misses the target here since the whole point of the free market is that maximizing profit individually leads to the optimal allocation. The critique against value is the same, i.e. that Hayek focuses on distribution of wealth, but not the production of value and the measure of value. Martin attacks the reality (i.e. monopolies, profit etc.), but not the idea.
• Freedom versus choice. Martin criticizes Hayek's notion of freedom. He argues that being able to choose freely in theory isn't relevant if it is not practical. Being free doesn't mean only being free from direct coercion, but that one can recognize oneself in what one does and how one spends ones time. Freedom requires the ability to participate in the decisions that determines our purpose. If you don't have this level of freedom you are alienated.
• To make your life your own you have to put yourself at stake in what you do. If not, you are alienated. Man muss sich aneignen!
• I'm not free unless everyone is free. If I want to be a philosopher or a musician, this depends on other being able to enjoy my work. If they are not free I'm constrained, even if I in my own life is more or less free, in the narrow sense of being in control of my time.

• Suffering, boredom and death are intrinsic to life. If nothing could count as suffering, we would never have a reason to object to anything that happens to us. If I'm never bored I do not care what I do.
• Striving is intrinsic to being. Striving to be a writer, a good son and a good friend is intrinsic to being all of the above.
• Being free is not a matter of being unconstrained, but being confronted with the question of what you ought to do and what you ought to beliveve. This question is always at work since one is always doing something, thereby not doing something else and therefore implicitly choosing.