Secondly, Hägglund’s secular faith is rooted in the genuine acknowledgment that purpose and meaning can only arise in relation to vulnerable and finite life it might therefore be fundamentally bound up with “the consciousness of knowing nothing.” And finally, this vulnerability marks a potential common ground where all different beliefs can meet. First, secular faith is not interested in rejecting religion but in clarifying the motivational directionality of belief and showing that what frequently passes as religious commitment is indeed deeply secular. But Hägglund’s idea of secular faith also sounds reminiscent of Jaspers’s suggestion for at least three reasons. But is this also the case for Hägglund’s imaginative book, which not only navigates the tensions between philosophy and religion but links a bold concept of secular faith to a robust political project? At first sight, Heidegger’s either/or is similarly cast in This Life as an irreconcilable dichotomy which could easily provoke conflict and self-negation. Given his lack of response, this suggestion might indeed seem useless to Heidegger. But to you that will seem very remote and hopeless.
If I were to inject myself into it, I would- in the consciousness of knowing nothing, but respecting the belief of the loved one, more than that, recognizing it as truth-perhaps speak in its forms and representations, and ask to put in a good word for me in heaven, and promise on my side to do what I could. That the alternative philosophy-theology can play a role here is heart rending. You are having a difficult experience with your mother, which I can comprehend from a distance. Jaspers suggested a third response that straddles the divide: In his reply to Heidegger’s letter, Jaspers tried to move beyond what he considered a wrong-headed dichotomy between religion and philosophy, which he believed Heidegger misunderstood as an either/or decision because his concept of truth remained possessive-Heidegger sought to own the time of his life and the authentic core of his finite Dasein. To understand the stakes of this conflict, it is worth pausing to consider another possibility. But does this suggest that Hägglund would concur with Heidegger’s decision against his mother? One substantial agreement consists in their focus on temporality and death which renders the idea of eternity at best meaningless, at worst detrimental to our freedom to shape our own lifetime. Although Hägglund only mentions Heidegger in two footnotes (in which he expresses a deep indebtedness), the book can rightly be regarded as a powerful translation of Heidegger’s notoriously difficult existentialism into an admirably lucid fabric of thought. It is clear from the letter that Heidegger decided against his mother and the belief in eternal life, which he implicitly justified with his own freedom that remains in irreconcilable conflict with salvation. How can he express his love for his mother and still own up to his secular faith? But what is the truth? His commitment to reflection against revelation conflicted with his commitment to the wellbeing of his mother. He expressed agony over a decision that features prominently in Martin Hägglund’s thought-provoking and ambitiously sweeping book, This Life: Secular Faith and Spiritual Freedom: Should we be committed to eternal or finite life? For Heidegger this question turned this last hour into a “lesson in practical philosophy” because his mother asked him a final time to return to Christianity, which made him realize that “the question of theology and philosophy is no longer purely for the writing desk.” Heidegger felt pressed to side with or against his own conviction, with or against his mother, speak or belie the truth. In 1927, Martin Heidegger wrote Karl Jaspers, his then still “comrade-in-arms,” a gloomy letter about his last hour with his mother before she died. Review of This Life: Secular Faith and Spiritual Freedom, by Martin Hägglund
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