Alexandre Billon

I argue that it is rational and appropriate for atheists to give thanks to deep impersonal agents for the benefits they give to us. These agents include our evolving biosphere, the sun, and our finely-tuned universe. Atheists can give thanks to evolution by sacrificially burning works of art. They can give thanks to the sun by performing rituals in solar calendars. They can give thanks to our finely-tuned universe, and to existence itself, by doing science and philosophy. But these linguistic types of thanks-giving are forms of non-theistic contemplative prayer. Since these behaviors resemble ancient pagan behaviors, it is fair to call them pagan. Atheistic paganism may be part of an emerging ecosystem of naturalistic religions.

Robert Pippin has long defended the Hegelian ‘satisfactions of self‐consciousness’ against virtually all attacks, including Heidegger's. He now concedes in a striking reversal that ‘Heidegger is right’. Pippin diagnoses his past allegiance to the Western rationalist tradition culminating in Hegel as resting on ‘a misplaced confidence in the inescapably self‐reflective character of any orientation or attunement to the meaningfulness of Being’. What were once the satisfactions of self‐consciousness have become its dissatisfactions. But does Pippin's presentation of the rationalist position ultimately make it too easy for Heidegger to topple it? Will the rationalist impulse, interpreted more charitably, rest undisturbed by Pippin's Heideggerian challenge? I identify three assumptions Pippin's Heidegger makes about the role of reason in our orientation towards the world. If these assumptions are considered not only optional but falsifying by any sound rationalist, this will damage the power of Pippin's Heidegerrian critique. For it is only against the background of a credible picture of the presence of reason in human life that the dissatisfactions of self‐consciousness can emerge to reveal a genuine alternative.

Poems are not the only things we sometimes call poetic. We experience as poetic also prose passages, as well as films, music, visual art, and even occurrences in daily life. But what is it exactly for something to be poetic in this wider sense? Discussion of the poetic in this sense is virtually nonexistent in the extant analytic literature. The aim of this article is to get a start on trying to come to grips with this phenomenon—the poetic as an aesthetic category that outruns poetry as an art form. It proposes an initial sketch of an account in terms of the fittingness of certain affective reactions to artworks and other things, reactions featuring notably elements of tenderness and elevation.