Excerpt: /330/ Reading Club: Freedom (2)

On Martin Hägglund's This Life.

We continue on the theme of freedom. In this episode, we look at what Martin Hägglund describes as 'spiritual freedom', which can ultimately be seen as a question of what we do with our time. Across the two chapters in question, Hägglund ties together his philosophical vision rooted in the notion of mortality and temporal life, with a social critique that draws on Hegel and Marx. He does this by centring the question of time, the only truly scarce resource.

How can we negotiate anxiety-inducing freedom today? Where do our 'existential identities' come from, and does Hägglund put too much emphasis on identity? And is Buddhist karma a system analogous to the market?

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Readings & resources:

• This Life: Why Mortality Makes Us Free, Martin Hägglund, Profile Books ––Chapter 4 and 5
• On time, work, freedom and necessity: /298/ Working For Freedom ft. Alex Gourevitch
• On Hegel and contradiction: /167/ The Kingdom of God Is on Main Street ft. Todd McGowan
• On Sartre: Being and Nothingness (1943) and his subsequent 1946 essay summarising ideas in the book, "Existentialism Is a Humanism"