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Alain De Benoist

On Being a Pagan Paperback – January 1, 2005

by Alain de Benoist (Author)

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In this small masterpiece, the great French thinker Alain de Benoist claims that only the pagan deities of ancient Europe offer a spiritual recourse to the present religious malaise. The guilt, the fear, the narrow petty-bourgeois obsession with well-being, and the self-loathing love of the Other that has left Western man defenseless before the destructive behaviors of our nihilist age derive from the alien belief system that Christianity introduced to the West. They are not part of the pagan spirit that lives still in the Rig Veda, the Iliad, or the Edda. Benoist helps us rediscover these ancient wellsprings and the fonts from which future greatnesses may again flow. But let the reader be warned, his On Being a Pagan proposes no folkloric or New Age "return to the past," but rather a Nietzschean recurrence in which the future bears all the promise of our distant originsand thus of another great beginning.

Michael OMeara, author of New Culture, New Right (First Books, 2004)

Print length

240 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Ultra
Publication date

January 1, 2005
ISBN-10

0972029222
ISBN-13

978-0972029223
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About the Author

Alain de Benoist was born on 11 December 1943. He is married and has two children. He has studied law, philosophy, sociology, and the history of religions in Paris, France. A journalist and a writer, he is the editor of two journals: Nouvelle Ecole (since 1968) and Krisis (since 1988). His main fields of interest include the history of ideas, political philosophy, classical philosophy, and archaeology. He has published more than 50 books and 3000 articles. He is also a regular contributor to many French and European publications, journals, and papers (including Valeurs actuelles, Le Spectacle du monde, Magazine-Hebdo, Le Figaro-Magazine in France, Telos in the United States, and Junge Freiheit in Germany). In 1978 he received the Grand Prix de lEssai from the Académie Française for his book Vu de droite: Anthologie critique des idées contemporaines (Copernic, 1977). He has also been a regular contributor to the radio program France-Culture and has appeared in numerous television debates.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Ultra (January 1, 2005)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 240 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0972029222
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0972029223
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 14.4 ounces

Best Sellers Rank: #3,857,056 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Alain de Benoist is the leading thinker of the European ‘New Right’ movement, a school of political thought founded in France in 1968 with the establishment of GRECE (Research and Study Group for European Civilisation). To this day he remains its primary representative, even while rejecting the label ‘New Right’ for himself. An ethnopluralist defender of cultural uniqueness and integrity, he has argued for the right of Europeans to retain their identity in the face of multiculturalism, and he has opposed immigration, while still preferring the preservation of native cultures over the forced assimilation of immigrant groups. He has authored dozens of books and essays on topics such as immigration, religion, philosophy and political theory. In 1978, he received the Grand Prix de l'Essai from the Académie Française for his book Vu de droite [View from the Right].

Editor of the journals Nouvelle Ecole and Krisis, his works have also been published in a variety of journals such as Mankind Quarterly, Telos, The Scorpion, The Occidental Quarterly and Tyr. Over the past forty years he has had a tremendous impact on the philosophical and ideological understanding of the European political situation.

Alain de Benoist continues to write and give lectures and interviews. He lives in Paris.

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Cristiano Nisoli

judeo-christianity=square-circle

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 27, 2010

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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.

11 people found this helpful

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scrivener

European critique valuable but insufficient

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 30, 2008

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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.

37 people found this helpful

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Aglaecwer

A pagan's must read.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 23, 2012

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If you are a pagan, you'll understand how awkward it is to have a book seriously written on our beliefs. We are not a book's religion; in fact, everything that really counts can't be written down. So this book was bound to fail. Theology is not, never will be, for pagans. Even so, I think this book is one of the finest failures that could be achieved when writing about paganism. Read it, think it over, read again, think more, then continue your own way the true pagan way. It is worth it.

8 people found this helpful

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H. Covert

Excellent Book

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 31, 2019

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It’s a great book and I recommend it highly. I was actually replacing my previous copy that got chewed up by my dog. Great service and a great book. It arrived early.

One person found this helpful

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B. Bunnell

Had to put this one down

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 21, 2022

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I made it to chapter 10 because I wanted to hear a pagan's take on good and evil (the author disappoints). I broke on the phrase "ruptures vital ardor." I'll leave it to you whether ardor can be vital, but it can't rupture. I've read better whale poetry. As a Christian, I don't recognize his critiques of Christianity. He seems obsessed with Yahweh, Adam and Eve, but hardly writes about Jesus at all. Also, I heard about this book on a podcast that is right of center. Throughout, the author cites the work of Erich Fromm who is a member of the Frankfurt School. If you have already realized Nietzsche is a waste of time, you can skip this one.

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sarah potts

Inspiring

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on July 7, 2015

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This is a wonderful book. It is so rare to find an author who so clearly puts into words all the thoughts and beliefs that I have been struggling to articulate over the years. It is a pleasure to read and I will be rereading and referring to it again and again. Cannot praise it highly enough.

Mr Skid

One of the best writers on the subject...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on November 15, 2009

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I bought this book after reading one of De Benoist's articles in the Tyr book. The cover picture of Odin implies that the book might be a light read. 'On Being a Pagan' however is an academic piece that explains polytheism vs monotheism on several planes - historically, spiritually and philosopically - and references humanities literature pretty much constantly throughout. It is structured very well, dealing first with historical issues and ending with the contemporary. I found that some chapters grated on my nerves after a while, as it seemed, as is the tradition in academia, that they spent a considerable amount of time explaining something quite simple. De Benoist makes good points in his arguments against monotheism, but be warned that this booked is littered throughout with bible quotes!

I might say that the tone of the first review seems skewed towards traditional far right rhetoric. Whilst De Benoist attacks dualism and monotheism in this book I find no evidence of him pandering to such a tone in his writing, and it is perhaps worth mentioning that he has made enemies in the political far right for his refusal to endorse their interpretation of his work.

Overall I recommend this book, but Alain De Benoist truly shines in some of his more recent articles and interviews, many of which can be found online.

7 people found this helpful

D. J. Mccann

Underwhelming

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on December 20, 2014

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As a pagan, I ought to like this book, but I can't.

It would really be better entitled "On not being a Christian or a Jew": its critique of those religions is powerful, if somewhat verbose and aimed at the more extreme versions. What it has to say about paganism is less substantial, however, and more representative of the author's opinions than actual religions. Thus he claims that pagans don't believe in a creator, which would come as news to most African pagans and Hindus. Other errors include stating that Daoism is atheistic and listing Tolkien as a pagan author.

This is an irritating book in other ways. The pages are like Queen Victoria's letters — littered with words in quotation marks or italics. They are also full of quotations, either from Frenchmen you've never heard of or, more usually, from the unholy trinity of Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Evola. It all feels very French and rather journalistic.

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