On Being a Pagan, originally published in French under the title Comment peut-on être païen? "How can one be a pagan" in 1981) is a book by the French philosopher Alain de Benoist

Alain de Benoist

Alain de Benoist is a French academic, philosopher, a founder of the Nouvelle Droite and head of the French think tank GRECE. Benoist is a critic of liberalism, free markets and egalitarianism.-Biography:...

, published in English in 2004. The book is a detailed and in-depth critique of the metaphysical

Metaphysics

Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world, although the term is not easily defined. Traditionally, metaphysics attempts to answer two basic questions in the broadest possible terms:...

 and ethical

Ethics

Ethics, also known as moral philosophy, is a branch of philosophy that addresses questions about morality—that is, concepts such as good and evil, right and wrong, virtue and vice, justice and crime, etc.Major branches of ethics include:...

 concepts of Judeo-Christian

Judeo-Christian

Judeo-Christian is a term used in the United States since the 1940s to refer to standards of ethics said to be held in common by Judaism and Christianity, for example the Ten Commandments...

 tradition, that have been influencing the Western culture

Western world

The Western world, also known as the West and the Occident , is a term referring to the countries of Western Europe , the countries of the Americas, as well all countries of Northern and Central Europe, Australia and New Zealand...

 over the past two thousand years. De Benoist details how many of these religious concepts have over time transformed into secular concepts and thinking, thus, having great impact on Western ideologies, philosophies and attitudes. He traces the thinking of both Marx

Karl Marx

Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...

 and Freud

Sigmund Freud

Sigmund Freud , born Sigismund Schlomo Freud , was an Austrian neurologist who founded the discipline of psychoanalysis...

 to their Judeo-Christian origins, and theorizes that racial intolerance

Racism

Racism is the belief that inherent different traits in human racial groups justify discrimination. In the modern English language, the term "racism" is used predominantly as a pejorative epithet. It is applied especially to the practice or advocacy of racial discrimination of a pernicious nature...

, among other things, might have its roots in monotheistic

Monotheism

Monotheism is the belief in the existence of one and only one god. Monotheism is characteristic of the Baha'i Faith, Christianity, Druzism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Samaritanism, Sikhism and Zoroastrianism.While they profess the existence of only one deity, monotheistic religions may still...

 thinking. In On Being a Pagan de Benoist argues for the return to the ideals of Europe

Europe

Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

an Paganism

Paganism

Paganism is a blanket term, typically used to refer to non-Abrahamic, indigenous polytheistic religious traditions....

 as a cure for the current malaise of the Western society.

The English edition of the book includes a preface by Stephen Edred Flowers.

Structure of the work

The work consists of 26 chapters.

• Part One: Never Dying, Always Reviving
• Part Two: Time and History
• Part Three: The Sacred
• Part Four: False Contrasts
• Part Five: Dualism: For and Against
• Part Six: God: Creator and Father
• Part Seven: Human Nature and Freedom
• Part Eight: Fall or Rise?
• Part Nine: The Primacy of Mankind
• Part Ten: Beneath and Beyond Good and Evil
• Part Eleven: The Shapes of History
• Part Twelve: Messianism and Utopianism
• Part Thirteen: Space and Time
• Part Fourteen: Iconoclasm and Beauty
• Part Fifteen: The Universal and the Particular
• Part Sixteen: Monotheism and Polytheism
• Part Seventeen: Tolerance and Intolerance
• Part Eighteen: Universalism and Particularism
• Part Nineteen: Politics and Anti-Politics
• Part Twenty: Man's Place in Nature
• Part Twenty-One: Sex and the Body
• Part Twenty-Two: Early Christianity and Late Paganism
• Part Twenty-Three: Divine Immanence, Human Transcendence
• Part Twenty-Four: The Coincidence of Opposites and the Problem of Evil
• Part Twenty-Five: Tolerance and Inner Freedom
• Part Twenty-Six: The Return of the Gods