Dedication
To my brother Juan, who left cancer one night while I was learning to take care. Your last few months were my best teachers: Love becomes sharper when time runs out. I couldn’t stop your death, but I could hold your hand. That was enough. This reflection on the unique life is, at heart, an echo of your final breath.
To Delfina, my girlfriend, who died so suddenly after I crossed the sea on my way back from Mexico. The last hug still hurts in my ribs. There was no time for goodbyes, only for a «see you later» that became definitive without warning. You taught me that love is also measured in the fragility of what is broken without noise. This unique life is more yours than mine, because you can no longer write it.
To Jorge Cuenca, that COVID brought before its time. There was no goodbye hug, only screens and silences. Your absence is a wound that does not heal, but in this wound dwells your memory, and in your memory, a lesson: the unique life is honoured by mourning those who are no longer with us without ceasing to celebrate that they were there. This essay is also a letter I never wrote to you.
To Daniel Rivera, as I write these pages about finitude, I think of you, who live it in your own flesh. That today you resist the onslaught of cancer with your body as a battlefield and your breath as resistance. May you find in these pages no easy consolation but company in the open. You’re not alone. Your fight is also ours.
To my cousin Elva, and Javier in Spain, who supported me during all those months without asking for anything in return. You weren’t at the foot of my brother’s bed, but you were at the foot of my bed when I couldn’t take it anymore. They took care of the caretaker. That is a silent and holy way to face death.
To all of you: Because I was taught that a single life – fragile, unique, mortal – can be infinite in the love it leaves and also in the love it receives when it can no longer give.
A single life
Meaning, anguish and possibility in the face of the finitude of life
«The soul is not a body, but something of the body, and therefore it exists in a body, and in a body of a certain kind.» Aristotle[1]
This apparently simple statement contains one of the most radical questions that human beings can ask themselves: what are we and what does it mean that our time on earth is limited? The consciousness of death is not an external datum that is added to existence, but that which is constituted from its root. Living knowing that one is dying – or more precisely, that one will die – transforms every moment into an open question about the value of what we do, love and decide.
In the Aymara worldview, ajayu designates the soul, spirit or vital energy of people, animals and nature. It is not a separate entity from the body, but that which animates it and links it with the spiritual and material world, in a relationship of total interdependence. When a person dies, the ajayu detaches from the body to begin its journey to the spiritual world or Ukjhupacha[2]. This vision, however, does not conceive of death as a mere loss or a fearful destiny, but as a transit that reveals the deep connection between life, community, and the cosmos.
Both traditions – the Greek and the Andean – agree on something fundamental: death is not an accident of life, but its condition of possibility. What changes is the response to that condition. Aristotle could still think of an immortal agent intellect; The Aymara ajayu, on the other hand, transits to another dimension, but without the promise of a fully realized individual eternity. Faced with these answers, twentieth-century existential philosophy posed an even more radical question: What if there was nothing on the other side? What if this life – one, fragile, unrepeatable – were all we have?
The Swedish philosopher Martin Hägglund has taken up this question with remarkable lucidity. In his work This Life: Secular Fait and Spiritual Freedom (2019), Hägglund argues that finitude is not a limitation that we must overcome, but the very condition of the possibility of meaning[3]. To understand this thesis, Hägglund proposes a crucial distinction between human beings and other animals. A baker builds his nest of mud following a fixed pattern; He does not ask himself why he builds, or if he could build in another way, or if the fact of building gives meaning to his life. The baker does not need to justify his existence to himself. The human being, on the other hand, not only acts, but can ask himself about the meaning of his actions and, more radically, about the meaning of his life in its entirety. «Only someone who is finite can feel the miracle of being alive.»[4] Life is not worth in spite of death, but precisely because there is death. An eternal existence, Hägglund argues, would be unintelligible as human life: without the possibility of losing what we love, we would not be able to experience care, commitment, or love in its deepest form.
Mortality, far from being a curse, is what makes us free to shape our existence. The baker cannot be anxious about the meaning of his life, but neither can he live an authentic life. We do.
This essay aims to explore this thesis from a dialogue between existential philosophy and Hägglund’s proposal. In the following pages we will examine Martin Heidegger’s notion of death as a «more proper possibility,» and how this openness to the future can be read from Hägglund’s perspective. We will address anguish and freedom in Kierkegaard and Jean-Paul Sartre, showing how the awareness of finitude founds the possibility of authenticity. We will confront «just one life» as a vital imperative based on the Nietzschean idea of eternal return and the concept of absurdity in Albert Camus and then show how Hägglund reformulates these problems in terms of «secular faith».
Finally, we will outline some ethical consequences of radically assuming mortality: if we only have one life, how should we live it? In this journey, Hägglund’s thought will act as a common thread, weaving together the different voices in a unitary reflection on the meaning of finite existence.
Death as a Horizon
Dasein as being-for-death
To begin a philosophical analysis of death as a condition for the possibility of meaning, it is unavoidable to stop at Heidegger’s work. In Being and Time (1927), the German philosopher proposes a radical turn: death should not be understood as a biological event that occurs at the end of life, but as an existential structure that constitutes the human being from its root. Heidegger’s starting point is Dasein – literally, the «being there» – that way of being that each one of us is and that is characterized by the fact that in his own being his own being is at stake. Dasein is not a fixed substance, but an open project, a set of possibilities that it must assume throughout its existence.
Heidegger observes that Dasein extends between birth and death, and that this extension is not an accident added to an immutable essence, but the very fabric of its being. «Death in its broadest sense is a phenomenon of life,» Heidegger writes. «Life must be understood as a way of being to which a ‘being-in-the-world’ is inherent[5]. This statement contains a profound thesis: death is not something external that comes to interrupt life, but a constitutive dimension of it. Dasein is always, as long as it lives, «being-for-death» (Sein-Zum-Tode). Its existence is oriented towards its end, and this orientation is not a mere biological contingency, but the structure that makes it possible for Dasein to be an open project, a being of possibilities.
Heidegger insists that death is, above all, a possibility. Not just any possibility among others, but the most proper, unconditional and insurmountable possibility. More proper because no other person can die in my place: death is the event that radically individualizes me, that tears me away from the impersonality of «it is said» or «it is done» (das Man). Unconditional because it does not depend on any empirical condition: death is not something that can or cannot happen, but something that will happen with certainty, even if we do not know when. And insurmountable because, once death comes, Dasein ceases to be there is no possibility of going beyond death, because death is precisely the end of all possibility[6].
From this characterization a crucial consequence emerges death is not an end in the sense of a simple completion, but that which allows Dasein to exist as a whole. «The ending to which death refers does not mean that it has come to an end,» Heidegger explains[7]. Dasein is not first a complete entity that then ends; on the contrary, it can only be understood as a totality to the extent that it assumes its being turned towards its end. Finitude, therefore, is not a limitation that is added from the outside to a life that would otherwise be infinite, but the very horizon from which Dasein projects itself as a possibility.
Anguish, authenticity and propriety
However, the structure of being-for-death is not something that Dasein recognizes automatically or spontaneously. On the contrary, the most common tendency of Dasein is to flee from death, to reject it, to hide it under daily occupations. This flight is not accidental: it is the expression of the fall (Verfallen) of Dasein into the world of the public and impersonal. The «one» (das Man) – that anonymous collective subject that dictates what is said and what is done – provides us with a repertoire of consolations: «death is something natural», «we all have to die», «as long as it does not come, it is better not to think about it». These phrases are not mere opinions, but existential strategies to neutralize the disturbing nature of death. The «one» transforms death into a statistical fact, into something that always happens to someone, but never to me in a truly personal way.
This is where anguish breaks in. Anguish, unlike fear, does not have a specific object. I am not afraid of this particular thing that threatens me; rather, anguish confronts me with nothingness, with the possibility of non-being. In anguish, the world becomes strange, daily occupations lose their weight, and Dasein suddenly finds itself as a radically finite being, thrown into a future that will end in death. Far from being a merely negative state, anguish fulfils a positive function: it unmasks the daily flight, reveals death as its own possibility, and thus opens the door to authenticity.
The authentic Dasein is the one that assumes death as its own, that does not relegate it to a distant and indeterminate future but incorporates it at every moment as that which gives weight and urgency to its decisions. «Finitude does not only mean that life has an end, but a reflection that puts the will before fighting against nothingness,» summarizes a careful reading of Heidegger[8]. To be authentic is not, therefore, to passively resign oneself to death, but to actively integrate it as the horizon that gives seriousness to each choice. Authenticity is Dasein’s response to its structural finitude, a response that does not deny death, but assumes it as a condition of possibility for living a life that is truly its own.
The Death of the Other: Levinas and the Critique of Heidegger’s Ontology
So far, we have exposed Heidegger’s existential analysis and its reinterpretation by Hägglund. However, in order to fully understand the relational dimension of finitude, it is essential to introduce the voice of Emmanuel Levinas. Levinas, who was a disciple and later a sharp critic of Heidegger, completely shifts the centre of reflection on death: it is not my own death, but the death of the other, the event that constitutes me as an ethical subject. Levinas’s fundamental thesis can be summarized as follows: the death of the other affects me in my identity as a responsible self-constituted by a responsibility impossible to describe[9].
For Levinas, the starting point cannot be solitary Dasein that projects itself towards its own death, but the encounter with the face of the other. The face is not a mere physical appearance, but an ethical presence that challenges me, that tells me “Thou shalt not kill» before any explicit commandment[10].
This interpellation is asymmetrical: the other demands from me a responsibility that I cannot fully repay or compensate. The death of the other is then not a biological event among others, but that which reveals the fragility and ethical demand of the face. As Laura Llevadot rightly points out, the death of the other constitutes the enclave of a second ethic, an ethic that does not resign itself to giving meaning to life in spite of death but finds its highest demand in death itself[11].
This second ethic to which Llevadot alludes is especially relevant to our journey. In contrast to the tendency of Western philosophy to question the meaning of life in spite of death. Kierkegaard, Levinas and Derrida open an alternative path: the question of meaning shifts to the relationship with the dead, to the absolute duty to love those who are no longer there[12]. The death of the other, in this perspective, does not close the relationship, but transforms it into an even more demanding responsibility, because I can no longer expect any reciprocity.
Levinas directs a radical critique of Heidegger on this point. While for the author of Being and Time death is the most proper possibility, that which individualizes Dasein and tears it away from the impersonality of the «one», for Levinas the first death we experience is the death of the other[13]. There is no privileged access to one’s own death – we never live it as an experience – but the death of the other is presented to me as an event that challenges me, that takes me out of my self-absorption and constitutes me as responsible. As Valeria Campos Salvaterra argues, Levinas thus denies death as the origin of time and the privilege that the future has in Heidegger’s work: more than the possibility of impossibility, death is the impossibility of possibility[14]. Man, more than being-for-death. Finitude thus acquires a new meaning, in which the death of others marks the ethical orientation that fundamental ontology lacks[15].
Hägglund and Levinas: two ways of thinking about the death of the other
Now, how does this Levinasian critique relate to Hägglund’s proposal that we have been weaving? Apparently, Hägglund and Levinas share a common diagnosis: death cannot be thought of in merely individual terms, Hägglund, as we have seen, criticizes Heidegger for his excessive emphasis on the individualization of death, and stresses that the loss of loved ones reveals to us our radical relational dependence. Levinas, on the other hand, goes even further: the death of the other is not only an event that affects me, but that which constitutes me as an ethical subject. There is no «I» prior to the interpellation of the other’s face[16].
However, there is a crucial difference between the two thinkers. Hägglund, faithful to his commitment to «secular faith», insists that shared finitude is the condition for care and commitment. The death of the other is tragic precisely because we love him and know that we can lose him. Levinas, on the other hand, introduces a more radical dimension: the death of the other is not only a loss that I suffer, but a demand that dispossesses me. The face of the other demands from me a responsibility that I cannot avoid, a responsibility that is infinite, that does not admit rest. The death of the other is not the end of that responsibility, but its exacerbation: the dead person continues to be my neighbour, he continues to demand my care, my memory, my justice.[17].
This difference has profound implications for our central problem: the meaning of the one life. For Hägglund, meaning is constituted in the care of the other finite beings with whom we share time. For Levinas, meaning is always beyond me, in a responsibility that exceeds me and that I can never fully fulfill. In the words of this writer, for most philosophers’ death is interesting because of its implications for the self, but for Levinas it is the other way around: the greatest meaning for the self is the death of the other[18].
Both perspectives are complementary rather than contradictory. Hägglund offers us an ethic of finite care, a way of living with others knowing that time is running out. Levinas reminds us that this care has a demand that goes beyond any calculation, that the death of the other does not close my responsibility but makes it infinite. A recent essay points out that: the face of the other assigns me a radical responsibility beyond any contract or reciprocity[19]. That irrecoverability of the other in his death is what, paradoxically, gives my own life a meaning that does not come from me, but from that which exceeds me.
Synthesis: Three Ways of Inhabiting Finitude
Let us close this chapter with a provisional balance sheet of the three positions we have examined:
- Heidegger teaches us that death is the horizon that individualizes and gives seriousness to existence. Finitude is the condition of possibility of an authentic life, lived as one’s own project. However, he runs the risk of thinking of that authenticity in too solitary terms.
- Hägglund recovers Heidegger’s intuition that finitude is a condition of meaning, but he displaces it towards the plane of common life. Shared mortality is what makes care, love, and commitment possible. His «secular faith» is a commitment to the value of the finite, without transcendent consolations.
- Levinas introduces the most radical ethical dimension: the death of the other constitutes me as responsible. The meaning of my life is not decided in solitude, or even in mutual care, but in an asymmetrical and infinite responsibility that exceeds me. The face of the other tells me “Thou shalt not kill» before any command, and the death of the other makes that prohibition an endless task.
These three voices, far from cancelling each other out, can be articulated in a richer reflection on the unique life. Heidegger gives us the language of authenticity and project. Hägglund connects us with others in shared time. Levinas reminds us that the other precedes me and exceeds me, and that the death of the other is the ethical wound that prevents me from closing myself in a solitary authenticity.
Anguish, Freedom, and Authenticity
Anguish as the vertigo of freedom in Kierkegaard
If Heidegger situates death as a horizon that makes authenticity possible, Sören Kierkegaard – his decisive predecessor – locates the origin of this possibility in a more basic existential phenomenon: anguish. For Kierkegaard, anguish is not fear of something determined, but the «vertigo of freedom». In The Concept of Anguish (1844), the Danish philosopher describes how the human being feels suspended above the nothingness of possibilities, without a firm ground on which to stand.[20]
The image used by Kierkegaard is revealing: a man standing on the edge of a precipice feels vertigo. But vertigo is not fear of falling; it is the awareness that he can throw himself, that freedom offers him the possibility of jumping into the void. That paralyzing and fascinating possibility at the same time is anguish. Far from being a merely negative state, anxiety is for Kierkegaard the condition of possibility of authentic freedom: those who have never experienced anxiety do not know what it is to really choose, because they have not felt the weight of the alternative[21].
Kierkegaard clearly distinguishes between distress in the animal and distress in the human. An animal may feel fear, but not anguish, because the animal does not have the ability to project itself into future possibilities, to imagine or what could be. The animal is trapped in the present moment; The human being, on the other hand, lives in the tension between now and tomorrow, between what is and what could become[22]. This tension is anguish, but it is also the raw material of all meaningful life.
The connection with Hägglund is evident here. Let us remember the distinction that Hägglund establishes between the beaver (or the baker) and the human being: the animal builds its nest following a fixed pattern, without asking itself about the meaning of its activity. Human beings, on the other hand, can question the value of what they do, they can imagine another way of life, they can regret their choices and anticipate their death.[23]
For Kierkegaard, this ability to open up to the possible is anguish. For Hägglund, that same capacity is the condition of freedom and meaning. Both agree: anguish is not a disease of the soul, but the mark of our humanity, the price we pay to be able to live a life that is truly ours.
Leap and faith: beyond aesthetics and ethics
Kierkegaard does not stop at the phenomenological description of anxiety; his aim is to show how anxiety can be resolved (or not) in an authentic life. To this end, he proposes three stages or modes of existence: the aesthetic, the ethical and the religious. The aesthetic stage is the life of immediacy, pleasure and escape; those who live aesthetically flee from anguish through distraction and constant change. But this flight is illusory: the anguish returns again and again, like a shadow. The ethical stage is the attempt to assume anguish through commitment and responsibility; Ethical life is governed by universal principles, by duty and coherence. However, for Kierkegaard the ethical state also fails, because no universal rule can capture the uniqueness of the individual and the radicality of his choices[24].
The leap to the religious stage is, for Kierkegaard, the only authentic response to anguish. But this leap is not the rational solution or a certainty; it is a gamble in the void, an «absurd faith» that suspends universal ethics in the name of an absolute relationship with the divine. The paradigmatic example is Abraham, who is ordered to sacrifice his son Issac. From an ethical point of view, Abraham is a murderer; From the religious point of view, he is a knight of the faith[25].
Now, what can Hägglund contribute to this discussion? Hägglund does not share Kierkegaard’s commitment to religion. For him, «secular faith» is a faith without God, a faith in the value of the finite, in the importance of our earthly commitments even though we know we will lose them. Hägglund might say that Kierkegaard is right to point out that anguish cannot be solved by universal ethics, but that the religious leap is an escape, not a solution. The true response to anguish is not to take refuge in a transcendent Absolute, but to accept the radical contingency of our existence and commit ourselves to it without guarantees[26].
Sartre: freedom as a sentence
Jean Paul Sarte further radicalizes this line. In Being and Nothingness (1943) and in his famous lecture «Existentialism is a Humanism» (1946), Sartre argues that «man is condemned to be free». Condemned, because he has not chosen to exist; free, because once thrown into the world, he has no choice but to choose at every moment what to be. Sartre’s famous formula «existence precedes essence» means that there is no predefined human nature, divine plan, or eternal essence that determines what we should do. We are born as a pure indeterminacy, a blank sheet, and then, through our choices, we build what we are[27].
Sartre describes freedom as an unbearable burden. Choosing is not just deciding between given options; it is to create the value of those options through the choice itself. There are no good or bad objectives that guide our decision; It is we who institute good and evil in choosing. This absence of objective foundation is what Sartre calls «helplessness» (délaissement). Helplessness is the experience that God does not exist or, more broadly, that there is no given sense of the world and that, therefore, everything is permitted. But far from being a celebration of debauchery, this situation is distressing: for if everything is permitted, then nothing is justified in advance, and every choice is a radical invention that cannot be supported by any prior certainty[28].
For Sartre, anguish is precisely the awareness of this radical freedom. Those who are afraid of the consequences of their actions are not distressed, those who realize that there is no starry sky above their head, nor a moral law inscribed in their heart, but only their own decision, naked and unjustifiable. Sarte’s classic example is that of the young man who must choose between staying with his sick mother or joining the resistance against the Nazis. No ethical system – neither the Kantian, nor the Christian, nor the utilitarian – can tell him what to do, because the young person is the one who must invent the value of each option when choosing it.[29]
Anguish as a condition of authenticity
In both Kierkegaard and Sartre, anxiety is not a pathological state that we must overcome, but the very condition of the possibility of an authentic life. The authentic one for Kierkegaard is the one who assumes anguish and takes the leap of faith; the authentic one, for Sartre, is the one who assumes his freedom and does not take refuge in «bad faith» (mauvaise foi), that strategy of self-deception through which we convince ourselves that we have no choice, that we are determined by our circumstances, our past or our «nature». Bad faith is lying to oneself; Authenticity is the courage to recognize that we are free, even when that freedom hurts[30].
What does Hägglund say about all this? Hägglund shares with Kierkegaard and Sartre the idea that anxiety is not an avoidable accident, but a structural dimension of human existence.
First, Hägglund criticizes Sartre for his excessively individualistic conception of freedom. Sartre speaks of «helplessness» as if the absence of God left us alone in the face of our choices. Hägglund, on the other hand, insists that finitude is always shared: we choose with others, for others, and in response to others. Freedom is not a soliloquy, but a dialogue – sometimes tense, sometimes loving – with other finite freedoms[31].
Second, Hägglund distances himself from Kierkegaard in his commitment to religious faith. For Hägglund, «secular faith» is a way of assuming anguish without jumping to the transcendent. It consists of committing ourselves to what we love – our projects, our relationships, our causes – knowing that everything can be lost, that there are no guarantees, that death and contingency lurk around every corner. But far from being pessimistic, this secular faith is a celebration of the finite. The miracle, for Hägglund, is not eternal life, but that there is finite life at all[32].
Synthesis: anguish as a door to meaning
* Kierkegaard shows us that anguish is the vertigo of freedom, the awareness that we can choose otherwise, that we are not trapped in the immediate. Anguish is the price of being able to live a life that is not pure instinctive repetition (like that of the baker).
* Sartre radicalizes this intuition: anguish is the awareness that there is no given meaning of the world, that we are free to invent it, and that this freedom is an inescapable condemnation.
* Hägglund recovers both intuitions, but reinscribes them in a framework of shared finitude, anguish is not only individual; it is the awareness that the time of others is also running out, that our relationships are fragile, that love and commitment are bets without guarantees.
The question that remains open is the following: if anguish is the condition of possibility of authenticity, how does this translate into the practical imperative? How to live well knowing that we only have one life? In the following article we will explore two classic answers: the Nietzschean idea of eternal return (which invites us to live as if each instant were going to repeat itself eternally) and Camus’s notion of absurdity (which invites us to love life without hope of transcendence). Hägglund will offer us an original synthesis between the two.
«Only once» as a vital imperative
The eternal return: the test of the instant
There are times when time stands still. Not because the clock stops ticking, but because consciousness is faced with something it cannot measure: the possibility that each instant, this instant, the smallest and most apparently insignificant, is eternal. Friedrich Nietzsche bequeathed us one of the most powerful images in all of Western philosophy: the idea of the eternal return of the same. It is not a cosmological theory, but a spiritual experiment, a touchstone for the soul.
Imagine, Nietzsche tells us in The Gay Science, that a demon appeared to you one night and whispered to you: «This life, as you live it now and have lived it, you will have to live it once more and countless times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every pleasure, every thought and every sigh, all that is ineffably small and great in your life, must come back to you, and all in the same series and order.»[33] Would you sink into despair? Or would you fall to your knees, grateful, blessing the devil for revealing to you the glory of your existence?
Nietzsche does not offer us a univocal answer. The eternal returns is a question in the form of an abyss. Whoever can wish for everything to return – including suffering, including failure, including loss – has said yes to life without reserves. He has loved the world not in spite of his pain, but with it. This is amor fati: the love of destiny, the ability to want each instant, precisely as it was, to be repeated for all eternity. There is no mysticism more radical than this: eternity is not outside of time, but at the heart of the instant. The instant, when it is fully lived, when it is assumed with all its weight, becomes eternal. Not because it lasts forever, but because its value is finite[34].
The Absurd: Rebellion Without Hope
Albert Camus takes another path but arrives at a nearby destination. In The Myth of Sisyphus (1942), Camus poses the simplest and most terrible question: why not commit suicide? If life has no meaning, if the universe is indifferent, if death erases everything, what reason is there to continue living? Camus responds with an image: that of the absurd man, who has understood that the world does not respond to his thirst for meaning, but that does not mean that he renounces living. The absurd is not a dead end, but a starting point[35].
Sisyphus is the hero of the absurd. The gods have condemned him to push a rock to the top of a mountain, from where the rock falls again and again. There is no progress, there is no end, there is no transcendent meaning. But Camus invites us to imagine Sisyphus happy. Sisyphus’ happiness is not an irony or a bitter resignation; it is the rebellion of those who know that their task is absurd and, nevertheless, embrace it as their own, sweat and fatigue are theirs. There is no God who looks down on it, but that does not matter: the struggle to the summits is enough to fill a human heart[36].
Camus’s mysticism is a mysticism without God, without heaven, without promises. It is the mysticism of pure immanence: the sacred is here, in the effort of the muscle, in the light of noon, in the face of the other. «There is a love of life that does not surrender in the face of death,» Camus writes[37]. It is not a love that denies death but embraces it as the horizon that gives density to every moment. To live without hope is not to live without joy; On the contrary, it is to live with the joy of someone who knows that there is no eternal tomorrow, and that is why today is everything.
Hägglund and the secular faith: a mysticism of the finite
Martin Hägglund takes these two legacies – the Nietzschean and the Camusian – and fuses them into an original proposal: the secular faith. But what does «faith» mean without God? What kind of mysticism can arise from finitude?
Hägglund invites us to a radical conversion: to stop looking for a transcendent meaning, an eternal guarantee, a foundation that never shakes. That search, he tells us, is a way of not really loving eternal life: he does not love this life, but another imaginary life. True faith—secular faith—is about committing ourselves to what we love, knowing that all can be lost. It is a gamble in the void, but not a leap into the void like Kierkegaard’s, but a sinking into the density of the world[38].
Hägglund describes this faith as an experience of the sacred that does not need the supernatural. The miracle is not that life is eternal, but that there is life at all. That we were born, that we knew love, that we saw the light of the sun, that we mourned the death of a friend – all this is, from the perspective of secular faith, a miracle without an author. There is no one who has worked the miracle: the miracle is that the world simply is. And that we, fragile and mortal, can say «yes» to that being[39].
This position has some negative mysticism to it. Traditional mystics spoke of the «dark night of the soul,» of the loss of all images of God, to encounter a divinity that is beyond all name. Hägglund proposes something analogous, but without divinity: the dark night of secular faith is the loss of all hope of immortality, the radical acceptance that our time is limited. And on that night, paradoxically, a new light is born: the light of aimless gratitude, of love that does not expect reward, of joy that springs from fragility itself[40].
The Eternal Instant: A Poetic Synthesis
Perhaps we can synthesize these three voices – Nietzsche, Camus, Hägglund – in one image: that of the eternal instant. Not an instant that is infinitely prolonged, but an instant that, due to the intensity with which it is lived, acquires the value of eternity.
Nietzsche teaches us to want the eternal return of each moment, with its pain and joy. Camus teaches us to be happy in the absurd effort of pushing the rock. Hägglund teaches us to have faith in what we love, without guarantees, with no more certainty than our own finitude.
There is a mysticism that does not need temples or writings: it is the mysticism of those who look at the sunset and know that they will never see that sunset again, and that is why they look at it with infinite attention. It is the mysticism of someone who embraces a loved one and feels in that embrace all the fragility of the world. It is the mysticism of those who, in the face of death, do not seek consolation, but find in death itself the reason to love life[41].
«One must imagine Sisyphus happy,» Camus wrote. You have to imagine the grateful mortal. One must imagine the finite being who, at the very moment of knowing that he will die, says: yes, I want this instant to return eternally. I want this life. I want this death, I want everything. That is the gateway to the secular sacred. There is no other heaven, but this heaven – the sky of a single sunset, of a single embrace, of a single life – is enough[42].
The ethical question: how to live the unique life?
We’ve come a long way. We have seen that death is not an outer limit, but the horizon that shapes existence.
We have seen that anxiety is not a disease, but the condition of freedom. We have seen that finitude is not a curse, but the possibility of meaning. And now, with Nietzsche, Camus, and Hägglund, we have glimpsed a possible answer to the central problem of this essay: if we have only one life, how should we live it?
The answer, if I may formulate it, is this: we must live it in such a way that we desire its eternal return. Not because it will really return, but because that intensity of desire is the only measure of a life well lived. We must live it with the rebellion of Sisyphus, knowing that the rock will fall, but loving the mountain. We must live it with Hägglund’s secular faith, committing ourselves to what we love without hope of immortality, but with the certainty that love, though finite, is real.
In this last part we will explore the ethical consequences of this position. What does it mean, concretely, to live the unique life? How does this mystique of finitude translate into actions, commitments, policies? Hägglund will accompany us until the end, because his thought is not only a meditation on death, but a proposal for life. A proposal that, I hope, resonates with each reader as an echo of his or her own most intimate experience: the experience of being alive, here and now, in this instant that will never return.
Ethical Consequences of Mortality
Care as a response to frailty
If we only have one life, how should we live it? So far, we have traveled a path of concepts: death as a horizon, anguish as vertigo, the instant as eternity. But philosophy cannot remain in contemplation. Any meditation on meaning becomes, in the end, an ethical question: what to do with this time that is given to us? Martin Hägglund, true to his purpose, does not shy away from this question. His answer is simple and profound at the same time: the recognition of finitude calls us to care.
Caregiving, for Hägglund, is not a moral obligation imposed from the outside, but the natural expression of those who have understood that what they love can be lost. I take care of my son because I know that he will grow up, that he will move away, that one day he will no longer be there. I take care of my friend because his death, one day, will tear me apart. I take care of my own life because I know it’s over. Care is not a burden to be beared; it is the very form of love when it has awakened to its own finitude[43].
There is an echo of everyday mysticism in this idea: the sacred is not in the temples, but in the way we wash the dishes, in how we look into the eyes of others, in how we stop to listen. Every act of care, no matter how small, is an affirmation that this moment matters. It doesn’t matter because it’s going to last forever, but precisely because it won’t last. The urgency of limited time is what turns the humblest act into a celebration.
Politics as finitude: justice without guarantees
But care cannot remain in the private sphere, Hägglund extends his reflection to politics. If we are all mortal, if we are all exposed to loss, then justice cannot consist in promises of immortality or in postponements of meaning to an afterlife. Justice, for a finite consciousness, is the collective organization of care. What does this mean? It means that a just society is one that recognizes the fragility of its members and makes it the centre of its institutions[44].
Health, education, work, the environment – all these dimensions of common life – are matters of finitude. We fall ill because our bodies are fragile. We need to learn because we are not born knowing. We work because we must sustain our existence. We take care of the earth because without it there is no life. A politics of finitude does not seek to eliminate death – that is impossible – but to distribute the conditions for a dignified life while it lasts. Hägglund criticizes religious promises of an afterlife, but he also criticizes political utopias that posit a perfect future where there will be no more suffering. Both, according to him, despise the present in the name of an imaginary beyond or hereafter[45].
Secular politics, on the other hand, is played out in the now. It does not promise eternal happiness, but the possibility that each finite being can live his or her time with dignity, with care, with love. There are no guarantees of success, but that absence of guarantees is precisely what makes the political struggle serious. We fight for justice knowing that we can lose. And that awareness of possible defeat is what gives our struggle its urgency and its nobility.
Forgiveness and Memory: Ties to the Dead
One of the most beautiful aspects of the ethics of finitude is its treatment of the death of the other. Here, Levinas, as we have seen, illuminates a territory that Hägglund does not abandon. If the other person dies, does my responsibility cease? Levinas replies no. The dead man is still my neighbour. Hägglund, from his perspective, can say something similar: Memory is a form of care that transcends death.
Remembering those who are no longer here is not a magical act or an illusion. It is the way in which the finite prolongs the presence of the absent. Not in an imaginary sky, but in the hearts of the living. When we tell their stories, when we keep their teaching alive, we are saying that their life – it was unique, fragile, mortal – had a value that is not extinguished with the last breath[46].
There is a mysticism of memory here. It is not a matter of believing that the dead continue to exist on some other plane, but of experiencing that their existence has transformed us forever. The other lives in me, not as a soul that has emigrated but as a wound that has healed and that continues to hurt on rainy days. To love the dead is to accept that they are no longer there, but it is also to refuse to forget them. It is the purest form of secular faith: to believe that what was, even if it is no longer, is still important.
Art as a celebration of the unique life
I could not close this reflection without mentioning art. What is art if not the way to stop time, to fix an instant so that it is not completely lost? Poetry, music, painting, cinema—all the arts—are attempts to capture the unique life and offer it to the contemplation of finite others. Art does not defeat death, but it defies it with beauty.
Hägglund does not develop an aesthetic theory, but his thinking points in that direction. Art teaches us to see what we would otherwise overlook: the light of an afternoon, the gesture of a mother, the silence of a decisive word. Art reminds us that every life is a world, and that every world deserves to be looked at, with infinite attention[47].
In that sense, art is a secular spiritual exercise. It trains us in gratitude, in attention, in the ability to marvel at what is. Whoever has learned to look at a painting as if it were the only thing in the universe has also learned to look at the lives of his fellow men with the same reverence. Art does not save, but it consoles. It does not last forever, but it intensifies. He does not give answers, but he refines the questions.
An Ethic Without a Sky: Living in the Open
I reached the end of this tour. The ethics that emerge from the consciousness of death has no heaven to support it, no hell to threaten it, no judge to reward it. It is an ethics in the open, exposed to the wind of contingency, to the rain of loss, to the cold of cosmic indifference. And yet, it is the only possible ethics for those who have understood that this life – one, fragile, unrepeatable – is all we have.
What mandates does this ethics give us? They are not commands in the Kantian sense, universal and necessary. They are rather invitations, advice, sparkles:
- Love what you love as if it were going to disappear tomorrow. Because that’s how it is.
- Take care of others as if their time is as valuable as yours. Becase it is.
- Forgive, not because a divine law requires it, but because resentment consumes the time you could have spent in joy.
- Fight for justice with no hope of final victory. Because the struggle itself is already a form of victory over indifference.
- Watch the sunset as if it were the first and the last. Because for you it is.
None of these recommendations are original. All have been spoken before by poets, sages, mystics, and atheists. But perhaps its true strength does not lie in its novelty, but in its urgency. If we only have one life, there is no time to waste in borrowed lives, in half-hearted loves, in postponed justices. The time is now. This instant, just this one, is the only one we have for sure.
Conclusion: the miracle of what is ending
I have come to the end of the question. The question of the meaning of life is not answered once and for all; It is answered every day, every hour, every instant, in the way we live, love and die. What I have tried to show throughout these pages is that the awareness of death, far from paralyzing us, can liberate us.
To free ourselves from the illusion of an eternal meaning that exempts us from building our own. To free ourselves from paralyzing anguish, transforming it into creative vertigo. To free ourselves from the false hope of an afterlife, to embrace with all our strength the only life we have.
Martin Hägglund was my common thread, but the voices of Heidegger, Kierkegaard, Sartre, Levinas, Nietzsche and Camus have woven a richer tapestry. What they all share, deep down, is a secular mystical intuition: the sacred is not beyond, but here. In the body that is ending, in the love that can be lost, in the afternoon that will not return, in the death of the brother, the girlfriend, the friend, in the useless and beautiful effort of pushing the rock.
«One must imagine Sisyphus happy,» Camus wrote. I would add: you have to imagine the grateful mortal. Grateful for not having escaped death, but for having had a life – only one – to live. Grateful for pain, because without it we would not know joy. Grateful for the loss, because without it I would not have cared. Grateful for the time that is running out, because precisely for that reason every second is a miracle.
This essay does not end but stops. Reflection on the one life has no end point, because life itself is an open process. What I offer, as I close these pages, is an invitation for each reader to continue the question in his or her own existence. How to live your only life? The answer is not in any book. It’s in the way you choose, now, as you read these words, to look out the window, breathe, and move on.
Angel Ontiveros Cabrera
Villa Tunari, Bolivia 2026
Notes:
[1] Aristotle, On the Soul, Book II. The Aristotelian thesis is that the soul is the «form» or «entelechy» of the organic body. It does not exist as a separate substance (unlike Platonism), but the agent intellect could be immortal and separate. This ambivalence marks the beginning of the Western problem of death and personal identity.
[2] In Aymara thought, see the works of Xavier Albó and Juan Van Kessel. The ajayu is not immortal in the Platonic sense: it needs the care of the living (offerings, memories, rites) so as not to get lost in the Ukhupacha. Death, therefore, maintains an active bond with the community. I thank Andean thought for reminding us that finitude is not individual, but relational.
[3] Martin Hägglund, This Life: Secular Fait and Spiritual Freedom 2019. Hägglund’s «secular faith» is not faith in God or immortality, but commitment to what we love knowing that we can lose it. It is a commitment to the value of the finite.
[4] Hägglund, This Life, p.17 The comparison with building animals such as the beaver is recurrent in Hägglund to show that human freedom arises precisely from the awareness of death, not from the supposed metaphysical «superiority».
[5] Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, p. 240. Heidegger introduces the notion of «being-for-death» as the existential analysis of the totality of Dasein. The emphasis on death being a phenomenon of life distinguishes his approach from traditional biological or theological conceptions.
[6] Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, pp. 264-265. The characterization of death as the most proper, unconditional, and insurmountable possibility is central to existential analytics. «Death, as a possibility, gives Dasein nothing to ‘realize,’ nothing that it itself could be as something real. It is the possibility of the impossibility of existence in general.»
[7] Martin Heidegger, «Finitude does not only mean that life has an end… but a reflection that puts the will before fighting against nothingness» (quoted in Gabriela Flores, «Death since Heidegger», Al existential, 3/08/2020). This interpretation underlines the active character of the assumption of finitude.
[8] Martin Heidegger, «Finitude does not mean only that life has an end… but a reflection that puts the will before fighting against nothingness» (quoted in Gabriela Flores, «Death since Heidegger», Alpexistential, 3/08/2020). This interpretation underlines the active character of the assumption of finitude.
[9] Emmanuel Levinas, God, Death and Time (Madrid: Cátedra 2025), p. 24. The full quote is «The death of the other affects me in my identity as a responsible self (…) constituted by a responsibility impossible to describe». This phrase condenses the Levinasian inversion of the philosophical tradition.
[10] Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, trans. Daniel E. Guillot (Salamanca: Sígueme, 1977), p. 56. The face is for Levinas the way in which the other presents himself, exceeding all representation, all conceptual capture.
[11] Laura Llevadot, «The Death of the Other: Kierkegaard, Levinas, Derrida». Llevadot shows how this second ethic develops in Kierkegaard as the absolute duty to love the dead, a requirement that suspends all ethics of reciprocity.
[12] Llevadot, «The Death of the Other», p.105 Love for the dead is paradigmatic because in it there is no longer any expectation of reciprocity; it is a purely gifted love.
[13] Emmanuel Levinas, El tiempo y el otro (Barcelona: Paidós, 1993), p. 56. Levinas’s critique of Heidegger is concentrated precisely here: the death of the other is the first death, not one’s own.
[14] Valeria Campos Salvaterra, «Death, Time and Alterity: Beyond Ontology. Campos Savaterra synthesizes Levina’s objection: if for Heidegger death is the possibility of the impossibility of impossibility, for Levinas it is the impossibility of possibility.
[15] Campos Salvaterra, «Death, Time and Alterity», p. 93. The expression «being-against-death» is key to understanding Levinasian ethics as active resistance to the death of the other.
[16] Levinas, Totality and Infinity, p.48 «The self is not prior to the interpellation of the other; on the contrary, the other is the one who constitutes me as responsible.»
[17] Levinas, God, Death and Time, p.27. Levinas maintains that death does not interrupt responsibility; It makes it even more demanding, because I can no longer expect anything in return.
[18] Angel Ontiveros Cabrera, «Othernes», Tinku.org 12/03/2023. Angel Ontiveros points out that, unlike most philosophers, Levinas shifts the center of gravity of death from the self to the other. I think that with this lucid formulation, the heart of Levinasian inversion is illuminated. Read the essay at: https://tinku.org/?s=angel+ontiveros+cabrera
[19] Mercedes Losada Sierra, «Death in the Face of the Other,» Estudios de Filosofía 39 (2009): 123-142, The article develops in detail how the face of the other assigns me a responsibility that is neither contractual nor reciprocal.
[20] Sören Kierkegaard, The Concept of Anguish (Madrid: Alianza Editorial 2008), p. 87. The expression «vertigo of freedom» is one of Kierkegaard’s most powerful images to describe the anguished experience.
[21] Kierkegaard, The Concept of Anguish, p. 112. «Anguish is the possibility of freedom. Only those who have gone through anguish are educated in freedom.»
[22] Kierkegaard, The Concept of Anguish, p. 56. The difference between the animal (which only feels fear) and the human being (which feels anguish) is a recurring motif in Kirkegaardi’s work.
[23] Martin Hägglund, This Life: Secular Faith and Spiritual Freedom (New York: Pantheon Books, 2019), Hägglund uses the example of the beaver, but the argument applies equally to the baker: the animal cannot question the meaning of its activity.
[24] Sören Kierkegaard, Stadium on the Road of Life. Trans. Rafael Larranheta (Madrid: Trota, 2002) Pp. 156-170 Kierkegaard describes the three stages through characters and pseudonyms (the aesthetic one is «A», the ethical one is Judge Vilhem, the religious one is the knight of faith).
[25] Sören Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, trans. Vicente Simón Merchán (Madrid: Alianza editorial, 2005), pp. 56-80. The analysis of Abraham and the sacrifice of Issac is the core of the work; there Kierkegaard introduces the notion of «teleological suspension of the ethical».
[26] Hägglund, This Life, pp. 89-92. Hägglund argues that religious faith is, paradoxically, a way of not taking finitude seriously, because it postulates a transcendent meaning that can never be lost.
[27] Jean Paul Sartre, Existentialism is a Humanism, trans. Victoria Prati de Fernández (Buenos Aires: Sur, 1947), p.21. The phrase «existence precedes essence» is the best-known formula of Sartrean existentialism.
[28] Sarte, Being and Nothingness, pp. 85-110. The notion of «bad faith» (mauvaise foi) designates lying to oneself, the attempt to deny one’s own freedom by taking refuge in roles or determinisms.
[29] Sartre, Existentialism is a Humanism, pp. 34-36. The example of the young man who must choose between his mother and resistance is classic to illustrate the impossibility of an ethical system deciding for us.
[30] Sartre, Being and Nothingness, pp.85-110. The notion of «bad faith» (mauvise foi) designates lying to oneself, the attempt to deny one’s own freedom by taking refuge in roles or determinisms.
[31] Hägglund, This Life, pp. 115-120. Hägglund explicitly criticizes Sartre for his individualism, and proposes a «common» freedom that arises from shared finitude.
[32] Hägglund, This Life, p.210. Hägglund’s «secular faith» is a faith without God, a bet on the value of finite life with no guarantees of success or eternity.
[33] Friedrich Nietzsche, La gaya ciencia, trans. Luis Jiménez Moreno (Madrid: Espasa Calpe, 1997), p. 198. The passage of the devil is one of Nietzsche’s most famous. The thought experiment of eternal return is not presented as a cosmological truth, but as an ethical test.
[34] Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce homo, «Why I am so smart», trans. Andrés Sánchez Pascual (Madrid: Alianza editorial, 1972), p.46. Amor fati is the Nietzschean formula for the unconditional acceptance of existence: «My formula for greatness in man is amor fati: not to want anything different, neither forward, nor backward, nor in all eternity.»
[35] Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, trans. Luis Echávarri (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1995), p.15. the question about suicide is the starting point of the essay: «There is only one truly serious philosophical problem: suicide.»
[36] Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, pp. 120-124. The final image of Happy Sisyphus is one of the most powerful in French existentialism. «One must imagine Sisyphus happy,» Camus writes, because lucidity over the absurd does not lead to discouragement, but to joyful rebellion.
[37] Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, p99. Camus distinguishes between religious hope (which postpones meaning to an afterlife) and love of life (which stakes everything in the present). This love of life is, for Camus, the highest form of rebellion.
[38] Martin Hägglund, This Life: Secular Faith and Spiritual Freedom (New York: Pantheon Books, 2029), ch.5, «Secular faith.» Hägglund describes secular faith as a «commitment without guarantees,» a bet on the value of what we do without any assurance of success or permanence.
[39] The miracle is not that life is eternal, but that there is life at all. The miracle is that we, finite beings, can say ‘Yes’ to existence.» This phrase sums up Hägglund’s secular spirituality.
[40] ibid. This Life, pp. 215.220. The comparison with negative mysticism (St. John of the Cross, Master Eckhart) is suggested by several commentators, although Hägglund himself does not develop it extensively. The «secular dark night» would be the loss of all hope of immortality.
[41] This idea appears in a scattered way in Hägglund, but also in Camus and in Nietzsche himself. The poetic formulation is a synthesis of the author of the essay, inspired by the sources mentioned.
[42] Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, p.124. The phrase «we must imagine Sisyphus happy» is the closing of the essay. The extension to the figure of the «grateful mortal» is a free interpretation by the author of this essay, in dialogue with Hägglund and Nietzsche.
[43] Martin Hägglund, This Life: Secular Faith and Spiritual Freedom (New York: Pantheon Books, 2019), ch.4, «care and Commitment.» Hägglund develops there a Theory of Care as an existential response to finitude, not as an abstract moral duty.
[44] Hägglund, this Life, chap.6,» The Politics of Finitude.» Hägglund argues that liberal democracy must be rethought from finitude: not as a system that guarantees eternal rights, but as a space for the collective management of fragility.
[45] Hägglund, This Life, pp. 240-250. He criticizes both religious promises of salvation and political utopias that posit an «end of history.» Both, according to him, despise the present in the name of a future that never comes.
[46] This reflection on memory and the dead is inspired by Levinas, but also by Hägglund (see This Life, pp. 180-190, on the death of the other). The poetic formulation is mine.
[47] Hägglund devotes a specific chapter to art, but his references to literature and cinema (e.g., to Terrence Malick) suggest an aesthetic of finite attention. This section is a free extrapolation on my part.
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