Customer Reviews

On Being a Pagan

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

As one used to Julian and Sallust, I always searched for a pagan philosopher who could take the thought of the ancient world into the modern, and joust with the predominant Judeo-Christian gestalt. Benoist is the man for this. His arguments in favor of a pagan world view are a welcome antidote, and have a high seriousness sadly missing elsewhere.

As an instructor of Classical thought, I was specifically looking for a work that would take that thought into the modern world. This work answered that need.

Wonderful a book as this is, as I read and reread it I wonder more and more how much of it is really about "paganism" versus middle-eastern monotheism, than how much it is a sort of contemporary continental European critique of American Protestant culture.

A true French scholar like De Benoist has wise things to say and critique of American Protestantism. But he attributes those faults to an imagined and overstated "Judeo-Christianity" that does exists less as a unitary Western social reality, but rather as a perceived ideological construct that enthusiasts of Europa have been chucking rocks at since Nietzsche. Like Nietzsche the "alien creed" called "Judeo Christianity" is one more Protestant than Catholic, one that is more a product of Post Reformation "De Hellenization" of Christianity that is the essence of Protestatism particularly more extreme versions deriavative of Calvin and Zwingli. De Benoist does not seem to make the crucial differentiation that Evola did when he admitted the Roman Catholicism is not the same religion as Protestantism.

Though De Benoist does admit that the idea of a Man-God like Christ is a thing that is very "Greek," in a word, he overstates the Semitism of Christianity. He uses the geographic metaphor of the desert to compare the monotheistic idea with its vast universal inevitability. In this he doesnt take stock of the subsidiary and syncretic nature of Roman Catholicism that is very tolerant of local difference without loing dogmatic order and hierarchical discipline.

De Benoist also fails to address the extent to which Platonic and Aristotelian metaphysics were incorporated into Christianity by Augustine and Aquinas. Hellenism already was operating on a universalistic metaphysics even before Constantine, and in the time of the Empire the dualistic Mithraism was the rival of early Christianity. Where is the accounting for the failure of paganism in the late Empire? Not here.

De Benoist is a good critic and this is an invaluable read for people of European ancestry who want to authentically engage their religious traditions and not just pretend that they started with Constantine. But by the same token we need to understand what has happened since then. Likewise we can't pretend that we can just recreate the lost mysteries or accomplish the heroic spirit of our ancestors by drinking mead from horns in oak groves. We need real religious community that provides a feasible way out of our bad situation and neither pagan revivalism nor insufficient cultural critique alone will accomplish it. Indeed we should consider the religions of our ancestors, but to jump past a thousand years of European Roman Catholic unity right on back to the pagan days is perhaps to do a big disservice to a not inconsiderable part of our own heritage.

This dense, extremely erudite, and well researched book brings the European New Right's finest and most challenging ideas together and points them in a new direction. If you like Spengler, Heidegger, Evola, and Nietzsche, and want to see how they still have a great deal of impact - then look no further. This superb text is an example of the very highest in contemporary writing and thinking about religion, culture, and politics.

Don't be fooled by the goofy wizard on the cover of this fantastic book: it's definitely not a Llewellyn book and it's certainly not for the fluff bunnies, monkeys or fairies (although these strange creatures could benefit immensely from studying it's content between naked romps around the fire pit!).

Alain de Benoist delves deeply into the metaphysics of Judeo-Christianity and ancient paganism, analyzing what differentiates them in philosophical terms by expounding his research and thinking on such themes as space & time, monotheism & polytheism and good & evil. He explores Nietzschean ideas like nihilism & will to power and proposes that a return to paganism in a renewed form is the solution to rid our culture of the rotting corpse of a God who's stagnant moralistic taint has infiltrated our society's secular institutions. de Benoist makes a compelling case when he examines how these defunct values influence everyday things such as politics, wars, sexual mores and an obsession with safety and well-being.

This book sheds cleansing light in dark places, lifts old stones and reveals the insects that scurry and hide! A must read for any self-respecting pagan who is looking for more than fantasies, parties and hugs from their path.

The profound state of disillusioned `unrest' waxes in an age in which a rootless universalism has become not only the overbearing `norm' of society, but hasmanaged to entangle its sinewy roots into the very weave of the tapestry of our collective social Being. Here in the West, it leaves its mark in an ever expanding void of anomie within that mainstream collective, leaving a growing number of folk lost in a gray sea of universal namelessness and faceless `normalness' as defined and established by the hollow customs and pseudo-mores which govern contemporary, mainstream thought. This of course, reaches beyond the merely `secular', and is indeed perpetuated-if not wholly rooted in- the Laws of universal dogmas to which so many today subscribe, or perhaps only nominally so -dogmas which `provide' for the soul of a non-existent (or properly, artificially constructed), omni-cultural `Universal Brotherhood' bound in some unseen and unreachable God -an established condition of dualistic reality in which that great, Completely Other is unquestionably elevated beyond and forever removed from its lesser, inferior creation: that `Brotherhood' through which all are expected to share in joy, and in which all are irredeemably equal -and utterly worthless as sinners in the eyes of the Completely Other.
The proper establishment of such a far-reaching manifestation in a total or `complete' sense would be quite difficult at best, if at all possible (beyond theory). An objective look into the social history of the West, and a frank assessment of the attitude of today's folk certainly reveals a different truth to matters. Indeed, while even now many would remain content in the omni-culture of the `Universal Brotherhood' (and along with it, surrendering a true freedom of consciousness and Self-Will to that of the Will of God) there's an expansive wave of those who have come to feel lost in that gulf of conformed mediocrity, particularly where the realization of the inefficiencies of universal philosophies and dogmas have rendered themselves transparent in their thinness.
Beyond religion, proper, the omni-cultural outlook of Judeo-Christianity has given foundation for the anti-cultural and equally universal (and culturally destructive) rise of its secular counterpart: modernism.
For many, this realization leaves them mired in a confused disconnection or at best, a sinking despair that only broadens the reach of the former. For so many others, such has served as a virtual threshold towards Self- and along with it (though perhaps not always in tandem), social and socio-religious renewal / rebirth. Of the latter two, movements such as the resurgence of Heathenry (in Europe, Australia, and North America), the emergence of the metapolitical philosophies of the French New Right and the birth of Radical Traditionalism
(...and others besides), seek to reverse the damaging trends of the cultural disintegration perpetuated by materialistic modernism, and bring about a return to a more holistic and culturally sound social approach in healthy and functioning communities.
In On Being A Pagan, Alain de Benoist presents a thorough and insightful exploration into the rebuilding of a healthy and culturally rooted West through the foundation of a strong and feasible Pagan philosophical world-view. The social ills of the modernist society -and its mainstream religious roots- are studied with considerable detail and scientific objectivity... de Benoist doesn't spend endless reams in unsubstantiated banter or heated rabidity, but instead presents his arguments from a clearly relevant and thoughtfully articulate perspective, rich in supportive facts and historical foundation. Such in-depth investigation into Judeo-Christianity (and its secular counterpart, modernism) offers the reader an essential and most complete understanding of the Christian / modernist paradigm and its intensive influence within the outlook of today's folk.
In bringing us through such lengths, de Benoist disentangles each and every knot of the choking brambles of the gross inadequacies of the artificial overlay that is the cult of the Completely Other and its secular offage, and sets sturdy footing for a legitimate and viable Paganism with careful design and deliberate steps.
Needless to say, the reader who seeks the misrepresentations or the misunderstandings of the parody of Paganism inherent within the delusional ramblings of so many New Age or would-be Pagan writings would be sorely disappointed. On Being A Pagan is a brilliant and refreshingly unique study, a relevant groundwork towards a solid and sustained renewal of the West through real socio-religious and cultural transformation on an evolutionary scale.

Divided into fairly short essays, this book delves into the nature of the Pagan soul as contrasted to the Modern/Christian soul. It is straight forward and to the point. The earlier reviewer who complained about the presence of Christianity within this book is obviously in denial. We can no more deny the presence & influence of Christianity than we can deny WWII. The changes wrought upon our understanding must be taken into account for any viable and serious type of Paganism to grow and flourish.

An excellent, in depth and scholarly, presentation of the 'meaning' of being pagan. Goes to great depths to clarify the differences between polytheism and monotheism. A must for pagans with an intellectual bent. Should also read his 'Manifesto for a European Reaissance'.

This enjoyable and agile treatise attempts to employ some of the themes of mature Nietzsche (will of power, eternal return) as well as a somehow Heideggerian conception of being and time, as tools to shed light on ancient paganism and to explore its (alleged) viability for the modern man. Many chapters are enlightening, especially for those who might think at ancient religions in terms of idolatry, and disregard their very specific conception of Nature--one which has now become alien to us: instead, deities as intermediary that "abolish the distance between man and the being of the world" and Yahweh as a jealous god (jealous of human accomplishments, of course) who, instead, proclaims himself "radically other" and declares that distance to be unbridgeable. (Incidentally "pontifex", in latin, means "he who builds the bridge"; I find it curious that the author never brings that out.)

All fine and well, but the author's greatest weakness lies in its simplified analysis of both Judaism and Christianity. For instance: was Christianity really imposed over the European peoples as an alien culture? Didn't so many of the northern barbarians convert spontaneously to the Egyptian Christianity of Arius? Aren't many of those Christian themes in fact borrowed from classical greek-roman culture? "By honoring his gods, man honors his ability (...) to become equal to the model he has chosen". Agreed. But isn't this what Jesus also says? Isn't christian faith an "imitatio Christi"? I would argue that the vision of Christianity that one finds, for instance, in Torquato Tasso's XVI century epic poem "La Gerusalemme Liberata" rings very similar to the pagan themes so dear to de Benoist: not a jealous god who destroys all that is human civilization, grandeur, even hubris (Sodoma, Gomorrha, the Babel tower) but rather a God who exhorts its Christian knights to establish a grand new Latin kingdom in Jerusalem, and thus to become like him, creators: literally, Tasso says, to be a flame of that fire that god is. Is it possible that precisely those typically "pagan" traits of Christianity in fact made the new religion desirable to the Europeans, by reviving those classical themes which were going extinct? I always thought that the expression judeo-christianity made no sense (except of course the historical sense, of the early christian Jews of Jerusalem, led by Peter and Jacques, which had probably very little to do with the Pauline Christianity we grew acquainted with).

At the end, if I had to compare this book to one of the works of Nietzsche (much to the delight of the author, no doubt) I would choose "The Birth of Tragedy", yet not because of content: this work also, albeit to a much less extent, contains remarkably interesting insights; this work also is magmatic and questionable. But still recommendable.

I came to this book with high hopes. The title, "On Being A Pagan" was exactly what I wanted to read, and de Benoist is a respected Pagan author. I wanted to learn about Paganism and the experience of being a Pagan. Sadly, I was disappointed on two counts. First of all the title seems to be somewhat misnamed, as the book seemed to me to be much more an explanation of Judeo-Christian ideas and doctrine, than an exposition on Paganism ! Every chapter seems to go, in depth, into the ideas behind Judeo-Christian concepts of God, rather than giving me an insight into Paganism. I found this so frustrating that I gave up on the book after a hundred pages, having had a brief scan of the rest and seen that it seemed to deal with similar themes all the way through. I was disappointed on a second count, because de Benoist's writing is opaque in the extreme and very difficult to follow. I am accustomed to academic texts, having attended University and gained an honours degree in Psychology. Despite that, and a deep interest in the subject of the title, I found de Benoist's reasoning extremely difficult to follow, and lacking in coherence. It was also severely lacking in charisma. The first problem I had with the book is definitely down to de Benoist himself, as he decided what he was going to write about, and how he would tackle the subject. The difficulty of the text, and it's lack of charisma may (or may not) be down to the translator, Jon Graham. Unless you are studying the subject for a PhD thesis, I would leave this book alone. It is hard (in my case, impossible !) to read and seems to me not to address the subject proclaimed in the title. A true disappointment.

I just got this book and tried reading it. I thought this would be a great book about the harm that the forced Christian conversion of Europe did. But it is the most boring and quote-happy book I have read. It reminds me of some of the French philosophy books I read in high school and university, too verbose and quoting almost exclusivly other French philosophers, as if they are the only people who know anything. It was just too hard to follow, too boring to keep up with and too frustrating. This might be the authors fault or the translators for failing to keep a better flow to the book. My advice, only buy the book if you want to have an interesting collection, or if you want to have brainfarts.