Martin Hägglund specializes in Post-Kantian philosophy, critical theory, and modernist literature. He is the author of four widely reviewed and highly acclaimed books, which have been translated into fifteen languages. His work has been the subject of multiple conferences and journal volumes, including a full-length edition of The New Centennial Review, a symposium in Los Angeles Review of Books, and a special issue of The Philosopher. He has lectured at venues around the world, and his writings have featured in The New York Times and New Statesman.
Hägglund was elected to the Harvard Society of Fellows in 2009, awarded The Schück Prize by the Swedish Academy in 2014, and received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2018. His most recent book, This Life (2019), won the prestigious René Wellek Prize.
Born and raised in Sweden, Hägglund ranges across French, German, English, and Scandinavian languages. At Yale he has recently taught courses on Heidegger’s Being and Time, the temporality of narrative from Conrad to Beckett, and the mortality of the soul from Aristotle to John McDowell. His books engage with philosophers of time (from Kant to Husserl and Derrida), theorists of desire (from Augustine to Freud and Lacan), modern writers (Proust, Woolf, Nabokov), and the legacy of German idealism (from Hegel to Marx and beyond).
Education
B.A. Stockholm University, 2001.
M.A. SUNY Buffalo, 2005.
Ph.D. Cornell University, 2011.
Research Interests
Modernism; Post-Kantian philosophy; Phenomenology & Hermeneutics; Marx & Critical Theory; Hegel & German Idealism; Psychoanalysis; Poetry & Poetics; Literary Theory; 19th and 20th century Anglophone, French, German, and Scandinavian Literatures.
Publication Highlights
This Life: Secular Faith and Spiritual Freedom, Pantheon Books, 2019
Dying for Time: Proust, Woolf, Nabokov, Harvard University Press, 2012
“Marx, Hegel, and the Critique of Religion: A Response” , Los Angeles Review of Books, 2021
“Natural and Spiritual Freedom,” The Yale Review, 2019
“Knausgaard’s Secular Confession,” b2o August 2017, published in boundary 2
“Beauty That Must Die: A Response to Michael Clune.” CR: The New Centennial Review, 15.3 (Winter 2015): 101-107.
Working Languages:
Danish
French
German
Norwegian
Swedish