Nicolás Gómez Dávila: Selection of Aphorisms (Translation)
With a brief intellectual biography by the translator.
Nicolás Gómez Dávila: An A(typical) Reactionary
Classifying Nicolás Gómez Dávila presents an ethical dilemma.
The so-called "Colombian Nietzsche" sought to evade the intellectual and institutional constraints we refer to as systems. He chose aphorisms over treatises—concentric, elliptical, and pointillist in nature—mirroring his own persona. This choice allows one to sidestep rigid structures, embracing contradiction with fervor. The aphoristic genre, characterized by its elliptical nature and the act of not-writing, inherently leads to asystematism.
In his intellectual pursuits, Dávila favored Plato over Aristotle's encyclopedic approach, deliberately distancing himself from Scholasticism—a rare stance among Catholics. His Plato is not the systematic philosopher but the ironic figure described by Derrida in Khora: a figure whose seriousness undermines itself, as literature, by nature, is a non-philosophical discourse. Dávila captures this sentiment with the observation:
"Plato perplexes historians of philosophy because, instead of facing a system, they encounter a clever smile."
There is no more convincing proof of Dávila's concentric nature than his Catholicism, which is gomezdavilian first, and French second. It represents then a sui generis Catholicism: romantic, pagan, skeptical, and sensualist. His theology rejects dogmatism and Thomism, dismissing natural law, and lacks any trace of Hispanophilia—characteristic of Hispanic traditionalism—except in a negative light.
Regarding Romanticism, it is essential to elucidate that Dávila did not conflate it with the common identification of Romanticism and Revolution. Contrarily, the Bogotan perceived Romanticism as an immediate reaction against the bourgeois spirit of the nineteenth century. Thus, Dávila, a man of erotic character (refer to Sombart's 'The Bourgeois'), championed the re-valorization of passions inherent in the Romantic spirit as a counter to "Enlightenment rationalism."
Dávila also adopts from Romanticism its prejudice against technique and industrial society. Let us take Mary Shelley's work as a paradigmatic case: Victor Frankenstein exemplifies a Prometheus who, through the use of technique, creates a true aberration. The modern Prometheus violates nature, desacralizing the world around him; thus, Dávila asserts that…
"Since Blake, Wordsworth, and German Romanticism, modern poetry has been a reactionary conspiracy against the desacralization of the world."
For our author, Romanticism represents a legitimate impulse towards the sacred in a desacralized world—an impulse that Dávila articulated in pagan terms, a tradition the Colombian upholds despite (or precisely because of) his Catholicism. And Dávila writes:
"…Since Romanticism, literature emerges not as post-Christian, but as pre-Christian. Its genesis does not hinge on Christianity but rather on its negation. Neither Blake, Hölderlin, nor Vigny writes in opposition to Christianity; instead, they oppose a world shaped by the void left by Christianity. The great modern poets, from Goethe to Yeats, are not descendants of Prometheus but progeny of the prophetic Sibyls."
Against Maurras's polemic—born out of his Germanophobia—between traditional classicism and revolutionary romanticism, Dávila affirms:
"It is often forgotten that the opposite of romantic is not classical, but imbecility."
This controversy, moreover, defined conservative literary criticism in the 1920s, among whom were T. E. Hulme and T. S. Eliot. With the latter, Dávila shares his Christian skepticism, that is, the Christian Pyrrhonism of Montaigne—Dávila's patron saint alongside Burckhardt—and Pascal.
Dávila, unlike Pascal's critical identification of Montaigne as a pure Pyrrhonist—akin to calling him a nihilist in contemporary terms—took a different stance:
"Pascal and Montaigne adversaries? Simple rivals, like different weapons in an army."
Dávila's skepticism, like that of Montaigne, is apologetic: a prophylactic against the heretical and impious. Here, the doubt that doubts itself buries any dogmatic pretension to deny God or create new gods.
"Apologetics must blend skepticism and poetry. Skepticism to strangle the idols, poetry to seduce the souls."
And it's that in Dávila, apologetics is more an art de persuader than an art de démontrer. God is not the object of human reason—there is no syllogism possible that can capture the Deus absconditus of Dávila's fideistic faith. And poetry in Dávila is the fingerprint traces left by God in the world. Thus, Dávila deeply despises scholastic systematization, which he describes as mere Aristotelian clay, and asserts that…
"If God were the conclusion of a syllogism, I would not feel the need to worship Him. But God is not only the substance of my hopes but the essence of my existence."
In theological matters, Dávila ends up being thoroughly and in all respects Pascalian, another sign of his heterodox nature, contrary to the conventional (Augustinian-Thomist) line of the Catholic Church. Reason for Dávila is not that which precedes the acceptance of grace, but rather a skeptical, refutatory reason. Like Pascal, Dávila assumes that between human cognitive capacity and the supernatural, there exists no continuity whatsoever:
"So great is the distance between God and human intelligence that only an infantile theology is not childish."
Therefore, his anthropology is also of a Jansenist nature: the Gómez Dávila's man is primarily an irredeemably fallen man. His man exists in a Pascalian world, an anthropic universe consisting exclusively of death, misery, and ignorance. In short, a beast:
"Man, an animal who envisions himself as a human."
Dávila thus embraces Pascal’s maxim that 'man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed.' Faced with activity, which bestializes us, and the intellectual life that turns us toward contemplation, Dávila chooses the latter. Since action leads men to
"…collaborate with baseness and cowardice"
In contrast, the intellective is what separates us from animals, whereas action merely confirms our fallen naturalness:
"Only the contemplative soul endures beyond the body's death."
Dávila's Intellectualism then takes a turn towards the erotic:
"The intelligent idea produces sensual pleasure."
Similar to Plato's Phaedrus, in Dávila's ideas exude a sensual quality, where intelligence intertwines with sensitivity, as the intellect becomes the organ of pleasure. However, the distinction lies in Dávila's view that Eros does not ascend towards the realm of the intelligible, as in Platonism, or towards God, as seen in Christianity (illustrated by Beatrice in the Paradiso). Instead…
"The dialectics of love unfold as an infinite succession of returns rather than irreversible ascends."
But returns to where? Allow me to make a speculative mention regarding gomezdavilian internalism, for it is there, in the return to the internal, where we find the authentic reactionary, as…
"The soul grows inward."
The return (nostos) that Dávila speaks of can only be the return to the inner citadel. An expression that comes from The Republic (ἔν γε τῇ ἑαυτοῦ πόλει) and is adopted by Marcus Aurelius as the foundation of the Stoic spiritual path, it is, as Pierre Hadot saw it, an inner discourse: a city whose foundation is words (τῇ ἐν λόγοις κειμένῃ). This is precisely why the Meditations bear that name.
This is the reactionary option that Dávila proposes in response to the modern malaise, one that implies, as in Marcus Aurelius, a kind of spiritual discipline, a true ascesis but literary: a return to words, to the implicit text. Dávila was a hermit, but not of the desert, rather of the library. Life, for Dávila, is shaped by the experiences born from his readings, and it is for this reason that he writes…
"I hope that these notes, tangible proofs of my feelings and resignation, may salvage from my ruin my ultimate reason for living. It is impossible for me to live without lucidity, impossible to renounce the full awareness of my life."
The Colombian's life, especially after his hip injury while attempting to light a cigar during a polo game on horseback, was characterized by constant reading, secluded in his personal library of over 30,000 volumes. A decidedly solitary endeavor, solitude that Dávila defines and defends in the following terms:
"In solitude, man regains the breath to live."
This is how one of the greatest interpreters of the Colombian in the European world, the sadly deceased Franco Volpi, saw it. It is the Dávila of bibliotherapy, the silent writer who was practically forced to publish his texts, and never in commercial venues. The old man with glasses and snowy hair in his ivory tower in Bogotá, with an aloof profile; sitting and reading, always reading.
Dávila thus represents Jünger's solitary Anarch, Heidegger isolated in his small cabin in the Black Forest of Germany. It is the choice of the defeated. And reactionaries (along with socialists) always end up defeated. There is a reason why the…
"The sole achievement of nobility in our time is defeat."
and that…
"One can only be an unwavering champion of lost causes."
In the face of that seething cauldron of sperm and shit that Modernity is for the Colombian aphorist, the only thing left for the authentic reactionary is the return to the inner citadel: the only possible Ithaca is within ourselves.
Scholia on an Implicit Text (Selection)
The reader will not find aphorisms on these pages. My concise phrases are the chromatic touches of a pointillist composition. Let´s reject the abominable suggestion of forsaking friendship and love to banish misfortune. Instead, let us interlace our souls much like we entwine our bodies. May the beloved be the soil of our shattered roots. Despite his rage against Christianity, Nietzsche's lineage remains uncertain. Nietzsche is a Saul seized by madness on the road to Damascus. Sad, like a biography. The world is blissfully inexplicable. (What would become of a world explained by man!). Geneva, the Geneva ruled by Calvin from his sickbed, the Geneva whose shadow stretches from Knox's pulpit to the Vatican antechambers, the Geneva where a world is forged, boasted around twelve thousand inhabitants circa 1569. Modern crowds, aside from being problems, are superfluous. Philosophy is a literary genre. For those born without any talent, a scientific career is advisable. Chastity, as one moves beyond youth, becomes more a matter of good taste than ethics. A true aristocrat is one with inner life. Regardless of origin, rank, or fortune. Sensuality is the enduring possibility of rescuing the world from the captivity of its insignificance. The New World proved to be yet another eschatological fiasco. Individuals or nations: different virtues, identical flaws. Vileness is our shared heritage. Communist militants before their victory deserve the utmost respect. Afterwards, they are nothing more than bustling bourgeois. Civilization encompasses everything beyond the reach of the university curriculum. No being is worth our interest for more than an instant, or less than a lifetime. In the eyes of the contemporary Christian, the crucifixion was a lamentable juridical error. The ability to perceive the mysterious extent of the atrocious perished with the Greek stage and Christian altars. The mere resonance of a verse is enough to shatter the debris that entombs the soul. Orphism and Rousseau share a parallel standing in history. While both fueled the democratic surge and Gnostic fervor, they equally stoked the flames of religious sentiment and a resolute reactionary stance. It's challenging to comprehend Burke without the Rousseauian atmosphere or Plato without the Orphic influence. The communist loathes capitalism with an Oedipal complex. The reactionary merely regards it with xenophobia. Sparta did not aspire to carve stone, but its soul. Those who criticize Sparta forget it captivated even the noblest minds in Athens. Patriotism, unless a visceral devotion to concrete landscapes, becomes rhetoric employed by the semi-cultured to herd the illiterate towards the slaughterhouse. Just as there is no tragedy except among princes and gods, there is no architecture except for gods and princes. Modern architecture is a bourgeois melodrama. The natural sciences can be adequately cultivated by slaves; the cultivation of the human sciences requires free men. There are two symmetrical manifestations of barbarism: that of peoples governed solely by customs, and that of peoples who uphold only laws. In every philosophical system, there is a secret place where the rigidity of reasoning fractures, and the continuity of thought is disrupted. Those on the left and the right merely vie for control over industrial society. The reactionary yearns for its demise. Souls that are not theaters of conflicts are empty stages. Uninterrupted harmony is dull. It is indeed true that nothing excellent depends on us; only the mediocre seems 'meritorious.' Virtues within our grasp lack grace. To dwell in every idea. For an instant. Only those who choose poverty or who inherit their fortune escape the veneration of money. Inheritance is the noble form of wealth. The ruler's immorality serves as the citizen's last defense against the escalating might of the State. Compassion may be anticipated from the wrongdoer, but not from the ideologue. Gloomy, like an urban development project. More than a Christian, I might be a pagan who believes in Christ. The problem lies not in sexual repression or liberation, but in sex. The ultimate aristocrat is not the feudal lord in his castle, but rather the contemplative monk in his cell. Some historians seem to assume that Athens is of interest because it imported wheat and exported oil. Spiritual realities move us with their presence; sensual ones, with their absence. Only one thing is not vain: the sensual perfection of the instant. Skepticism is the humility of intelligence. The foolish once attacked the Church; now, they attempt to reform it. With Independence, the spiritual authenticity of America perished. While capable during the colonial period of adapting Mediterranean forms to new landscapes and even imbuing the Baroque with its unique flavor, it later succumbed to docile mimicry of the trends of the day. The limited yet authentic originality of a Spanish province that it possessed during the colonial era transformed into the peculiar, tasteless plagiarism of slums. 'Human' — the adjective that serves to excuse anything vile. The Church's role isn't to conform Christianity to the world, nor even to conform the world to Christianity; rather, its purpose is to uphold a counter-world within the world. In intellectually deprived nations, the patriotism of the reader makes up for the author's lack of talent. A lexicon of ten words — that´s enough for a Marxist to 'explain' history. Capitalism is abominable because it achieves that disgusting prosperity promised in vain by the socialism that despises it. Nietzsche's Christians are not those of yesterday but of today. An imprecise historian, yet, perhaps, a prophet. Interrogation falls silent only when faced with love. "Why love?" is the sole unanswerable question. Journalism. Sociology. Ethics. The three enemies of Literature. Ecology is the pastoral version of the stern reactionary text. The advantage of the aphorism over the system lies in the ease with which its insufficiency can be demonstrated. It's as hard to hide within a few words as amidst a few trees. In each reactionary, Plato is resurrected. More than a episcopal assembly, the Second Vatican Council appears more like a huddle of alarmed manufacturers who have lost their clientele. To be young is to fear being deemed foolish; to mature is to fear becoming so. Marxism: the ultimate honest expression of bourgeois optimism. Catholicism doesn't solve every problem, but it's the sole doctrine that posits them. The initial notes of the counter-revolutionary symphony resonate within Rousseau's prose. To speak of the 'will to power' is to dignify the truth. Above all, man yearns to humiliate. When the object loses its sensual fullness and transforms into a mere instrument or sign, reality fades away, and God vanishes. In democratic theory, 'people' signifies populus; in democratic practice, 'people' means plebs. The nation—a recent phenomenon without geographical or ethnic foundations; a mere legal and political construct—suppresses both the real community of the kleinstaat and the ideal community of the Holy Roman Empire. After living through an era virtually devoid of religion, the Christian learns to write the history of paganism with respect and sympathy. Rather than referring to an 'industrial society,' the term 'consumer society' is commonly used, a way to sidestep the issue by pretending to address it. Let us not condemn capitalism for fostering inequality, but rather for promoting the ascendancy of inferior human types. In the depths of the soul, much like the attics of old houses, one finds nothing but dead mice amidst broken furniture. What isn't intricate is false. To avoid perishing at the hands of technology, nature seeks sanctuary in the imagination of a select few. Obscurantist canon of the old metropolitan council of Santa Fe. Brusque churchwoman from Bogota. Rugged land-owning sabanero. We are all of the same breed. With my current compatriots, I only share a passport. Nietzsche: the sole noble inhabitant of a world in ruins. Only his choice could be unveiled without shame in the face of God's resurrection. Aging, a bodily calamity that our cowardice transforms into a calamity of the soul. The perfections of those we love are not falsehoods of love. To love is, on the contrary, the privilege of discerning a perfection invisible to other eyes. Some openly confess to 'studying literature' without a hint of shame. 'Modernist' aesthetics are the invention of reactionary writers: Balzac, Baudelaire, Eliot. I understand communism as a protest, but not as a hope. A genuine Catholic is one who erects the cathedral of his soul upon pagan crypts. The Antichrist is, probably, man. The strength of the Spanish soul: the hard soil of an eroded land. The West will have died when it ceases to embody Greece in a Christian soul. Men are divided into two camps: those who believe in original sin and fools. The three hypostases of egoism: individualism, nationalism, and collectivism. The democratic trinity. Sexual promiscuity is the gratuity through which society placates its slaves. Psychology is, properly, the study of bourgeois behavior. Industrial prosperity makes everyone share the vulgarities of the rich and the servitudes of the poor. Contradiction rightfully embraced is a sign of vigorous thought. The three great reactionary missions in modern history: Italian Humanism, French Classicism, and German Romanticism. My convictions are the same as those of the elderly woman who prays in the corner of a church. The Left arrived in America with Bartolomé de las Casas. Paradigmatically, what tends to happen with the Left unfolded: it didn't liberate the Indian but enslaved the Black. An "ideal society" would be the graveyard of human greatness. The ancients regarded the historical or mythical hero, like Alexander or Achilles, as the template for human life. The great man was paradigmatic; his existence, exemplary. The democratic man, on the contrary, is the common man. The democratic model must deliberately lack any admirable attribute. The rise of nationalism in any nation signifies the death throes of its uniqueness. An education devoid of humanities is barren, for true learning doesn't come from mastering a few techniques but from steeping oneself in timeless commonplaces. This century is slowly sinking into a swamp of sperm and shit. When manipulating current events, the future historian must don gloves. Stoicism, without a doubt, is the origin of all errors. (Deification of man - determinism - natural law - egalitarianism - cosmopolitanism - etc.) Bourgeoisie is any group of individuals dissatisfied with what they have and content with what they are. Fatherland, without nationalistic rhetoric, is simply the space an individual beholds around him while ascending a hill. The Übermensch: recourse of a dissatisfied atheism. Nietzsche invents a human solace for the death of God; Gnostic atheism, on the other hand, proclaims the divinity of man. The existence of those we love is enough for us. The Church's grave error wasn't condemning Galileo but rather ascribing significance to the issue he addressed. To age with dignity is the task of every instant. Dehellenizing Christianity turns it into a sect. We reactionaries are unfortunate: the left steals our ideas, and the right steals our vocabulary.