Martin Hägglund’s  This Life: Secular Faith and Spiritual Freedom

Because most people spend little time analysing political events or

studying history, democracy will always risks being shaped

by voters’ feelings rather than analysis.

Los Angeles Times, 1938, qtd. in Behold, America:

A History of America First and the American Dream.

“...Put self at stake...”

This is the phrase that caught my attention when I first heard about Swedish philosopher Martin Hägglund’s new book, This Life: Secular Faith and Spiritual Freedom. It’s worth reading, I thought. Put self at stake.

The righteous, as Hägglund describes the religious, with all seriousness, look forward to eternity rather than be present at home on Earth. This believe in a location in which time is no longer and space is endless coincidentally happens to have more more wage earners as adherents than those wealthy, young billionaires springing up daily. These wage earners assume, as if inevitable, that humans suffer life as punishment from a divine authority. A chosen few, however, will be rewarded with a ticket to heaven. So life is endured. Work is endured. Nothing more is to be expected until judgment day.

If the wage laborer has time to look up at the sky, she might see a jet or two—private jets, owned by the 1%--flying overhead, to land near by at a private air field. Or maybe the nurses note how the 1% percent are never patients at the Cook County Hospital. Neither are they observed enrolling their children at in a public school in Detroit. The 1% percent vacation at Martha’s Vineyard or in the South of France. And they don’t need to save their pennies or pray for a divine entity to make it possible! And the wage earner will have to work twice as hard, if not longer, for the next few months after returning from Disney World.

The wage laborer will have a thing or two to say about those immigrants, those migrant workers from Guatemala (and don’t ask the American worker to locate Guatemala on the map). They don’t belong here! That’s all I know. They don’t belong! Build a wall!

And blacks, of course. Always—black Americans—are perceived as threatening the very existence of white civilization!

We are finite and we are dependent on others. The divine gives, takes away, rewards, and punishes. And let no true believer acknowledge the other as anything other than an enemy, threatening contamination among the flock, with talk of freedom and equality. Western ordering of humanity, as everyone knows, seats white males on the top rung of the ladder. Animals below. The divine wants humanity’s undivided attention focused on eternity—not life on this planet.

It’s no wonder a good portion of humanity’s religious live in fear of divine retribution. To think of liberation from this fear would be blasphemous.

“...Put the self at stake.”

The religious ideal of salvation, writes Hägglund, is “incompatible with a secular ideal of freedom.” Think about this, he asks, when we consider wage laborers and the way in which this population is coerced into being slaves for the better part of a day, for the better part of our lives. All ideologies that are anti-life must give way for the transformation of our individual and collective lives to take place. Or else…

We must “put the self at stake!

Hägglund presents “a thought experiment” offered by sociologist Phil Zuckerman. There are two children. Both are entrusted with looking at an artwork in a room all by themselves. The first child is told that the artwork is “deeply valuable” and “very fragile.” It’s unique: the only one of its kind in the world! It would be a tragedy if the artwork should be damaged. It would be lost forever.

Do not touch!

However dire the warning, there will be no punishment if something did happen to the work and no reward if the work remains safe. Just be careful—“it deserves to be respected in its fragility.” Think of the people who would be saddened to see it damaged.

The second child receives the same warning not to touch the artwork, only she is told that the principal of the school will be watching her from a hole in the ceiling. So beware! You are watched and you’ll be punished! However, if the artwork isn’t touched by you, then expect to be rewarded for obeying orders not to touch.

For the first child, the artwork becomes something to care about. Understanding its value, she is pleased to be responsible for its safety and even wants to see to it that others are permitted to see the artwork too. It’s the lesson of responsibility to others that this child learns “on the basis of her own freedom and sense of finitude,” writes Hägglund. The valuable work would cease to be just as she will cease to be at her death.

“This is a secular model of morality” in contrast to the second child who refrains “from touching the artwork because she fears punishment and hopes for a reward.” The second child not in control since the divine holds all the cards—so she believes. It’s what she’s told. She, in turn, just plays along. Nothing is at stake, except the lose of the divine narrative over and above what might be recognized as valuable for the self and others.

The religious model, Hägglund writes, guides the second child, “where the child is taught responsibility on the basis of coercion.” The boss says do it—so you’d better!

Life is what it is! Divine authority keeps score in heaven as do bosses here on Earth. Retribution and reward become the norm. Nothing is done because anyone cares. Nothing is done out of love. Freedom on this planet isn’t an option. Wait for your eternity in heaven. And justice? As Hägglund explains, both freedom and justice “are at odds with the religious teachings of salvation as the ultimate end.”

With the first child, something is put at stake and that something is her commitment to freedom and justice. To a cause. Or two.

Religion, on the other hand, is the seeking of liberation from finite life, whereas secular faith seeks “the liberation of finite life.”

Where do we go from here?

To Karl Marx. We are at this juncture not just in this article but also in our nation when faced with the threat of global heating, for openers, and a rise in hateful race-based violence, we need to return to the works of Marx and Dr. Martin L. King, as does Hägglund in his turn toward the injustice and unfreedom of an ideology such as capitalism.

Hägglund writes that there’s no support in Marx’s thinking “for any form of totalitarian state.” Let’s not think, then, on the Soviet Union. We, on the contrary, must return to Marx and his work. And try again. Marx is committed to freedom.

While Hägglund is thorough in his analysis of Marx, taking the reader through the alphabet of philosophers from Aristotle to Hegal, for the purpose of this article, it’s enough to report that Marx is alive and well in This Life. For if nothing else, Marx, according to Hägglund is about “the free development of individuals” and this crusade forms the foundation of Marx’s critique of both capitalism and religion.

Hägglund’s vision of a spiritual life requires a commitment on the part of the individual to sustain her identity. However thoughtful the policies regarding “equality,” we do not discriminate against…, workers are nonetheless coerced into working for the benefit of someone else who is profiting from a very unequal system of production and labor. That someone isn’t concerned about the pursuit of freedom for others (just self and the familial) or adequate wages for laborers (again, self and the familial, thank you!). It’s America! Home of liberty and justice and all those “freedoms” other nations don’t appear (on Fox News or MSNBC) to possess. The 1% rules this domain—not quite heaven for the workers—but certainly for their collective, an oligarchy in control of who receives what goods and services. Or not!

“To value someone or something is to put myself at stake in what happens to what I value. By virtue of my commitment, I cannot be indifferent but must be responsive to the fate of what I value.” At the workplace, however, I’m not permitted to have an identity in which I “put myself at stake”! In most work places, indifference matters. The position is contingent on my ability to be distant and indifferent. It’s not just a question of how much I’m paid, regardless of whether or not I’m a woman or a black American. The struggle should begin with questioning whether or not I’m free at work. I should be free to engage my secular faith in pursuit of spiritual freedom.

It seems so odd, almost absurd to write such a sentence—I should be free at work to engage my secular faith in pursuit of my spiritual freedom. My life and that of others in this domain aren’t valued; therefore, my finite life and those of others is at risk. In this domain of contradictions, I’m not free because coerced into being indifferent as to the product I help produce, to sustain, in the long run, inequality and my state of unfreedom.

Spiritual freedom is an unconditional value—not some innate thing. “We should not be defined once and for all by a given social role (family, profession, religion, nationality, ethnicity, gender), writes Hägglund. Rather, we should be free to transform the normative conception of ourselves and “our institutions should reflect that freedom,” Hägglund argues. It’s sounds strange, but at one time, it was strange for Americans to think of the Indigenous and the black American as human!

For Hägglund, Marx is “highly critical” of any form of coerced labor. Marx, therefore, advocated emancipation, a liberation, that is, not only freeing us from work, but also freeing us to work “in light of the ends that matter to us.” Marx critique, one of liberal democracy for its practice of hypocrisy rather than freedom, is an immanent critique therefore because it “locates a contradiction between the avowed ideals of an institution or an ideology and the actual practical form it legislates for itself.” From deep within the narrative of work is the contradiction: it reports to practice equality but, in fact, it relegates both the idea of freedom and equality to the realm of the absurd, the ridiculous.

Only the chosen few (very, very few) rise to the top of this domain—similar to Christianity, writes Hägglund. If you aren’t one of the blessed, accepting your possession of an “immortal soul,” the object of “God’s love,” then you are worthless. Coerced labor is best for you!

The commitment to freedom, Marx notes, is betrayed by “the social organization and division of labor that is enforced by capitalism.” Waged labor, therefore, contradicts our pursuit of freedom and, in the process, warps our identity as human beings capable of living as human beings. Waged labor is no more a necessity to “a free society” than was slavery—except the latter was acknowledged as a given by a divine authority to a select few to oversee.

Everything is at stake, writes Hägglund, “in how we lead our lives individually and collectively” because “we are capable of leading our lives,” and doing so comes with risks and failures to pursue our freedom. But everything is in the pursuit of freedom. That is life!

To stay committed to individual freedom “as normative” pursuit in life is not to simply say we are for equality. We must, instead, ask the question—who determines for the majority who should enjoy equality before the law and constitutional rights.” Otherwise, we are as hypocritical as the institutions we claim to be transforming.

What do I do with my time?

Hägglund: “What belongs to me for as long as I live” is the time I have in my finite life. “When I sell my labor time to someone else for a wage, I am therefore necessarily selling my own life. My time cannot be separated from my life, and under capitalism my time is explicitly recognized as valuable.” I am free but free to labor for someone to profit from my time.

Where is the spiritual freedom, asks Hägglund, when, in exchange for my precious time, I receive a wage that can’t sustaining my life, let alone allow me to pursue what matters to maintain my identity? Consequently, Hägglund argues that for “democracy to be true to its own concept of freedom and equality, capitalism must therefore be overcome.” That I’m anxious about our fate as human beings, I’m anxious about the fate of the planet and all life, is being an individual who recognizes a role as responsible citizen of the world. So my anxiety is reducible “to a psychological condition that can or should be overcome.” Overcome capitalism!

It’s a different position—to stand outside of organized dogma and doctrines.

“The principles of democratic socialism cannot simply be posited but must be shown to be implicit in the Idea of freedom that is our historical achievement,” writes Hägglund. Unlike the religious, “we do not seek liberation from finite life, but rather the salvation of finite life.” Because we are finite, emancipation from the state is necessary, writes Hägglund in order to call into being democratic socialism. Capitalism isn’t a given. If we, however, “measure our social wealth in terms of labor time, Hägglund explains, then we should expect to chain development to “intensifying exploitative methods for extracting relative surplus value from workers.” As individuals we must

This too can be overcome but it requires that we, as individuals educate ourselves “as social individuals who democratically plan the purposes of production.”

At this juncture, humanity is just old enough to relinquish our fear of losing what was never a given, never a suitable way in which to confront the time that is ours to do what we must for self and others.

Life is finite.