Nicolás Gómez Dávila: The greatest philosopher you never heard of

[Ad Orientem]

Some aphorisms from one of the world's great reactionary curmudgeons.

The left claims that the guilty party in a conflict is not the one who covets another’s goods but the one who defends his own.
Democratic parliaments are not places where debate occurs but where popular absolutism registers its edicts.
"Taste is relative" is the excuse adopted by those that have bad taste.
The modernist object does not possess inner life; only internal conflicts.
Whoever says that he "belongs to his time" is only saying that he agrees with the largest number of fools at that moment
The criterion of "progress" between two cultures or two eras consists of a greater capacity to kill.
The word "modern" no longer has an automatic prestige except among fools.
If philosophy does not resolve any scientific problem, science, in its turn, does not resolve any philosophical problem.
Truths are not relative. What are relative are opinions about truth.
To tolerate does not mean to forget that what we tolerate does not deserve anything more.
The difference between "organic" and "mechanical" in social matters is a moral one: the "organic" is the result of innumerable humble acts; the "mechanical" is the result of one decisive act of arrogance.
Love of the people is an aristocratic calling. The democrat only loves the people at election time.
The individual shrinks in proportion as the state grows
Violence is not necessary to destroy a civilization. Each civilization dies from indifference toward the unique values which created it.
Every marriage of an intellectual with the communist party ends in adultery.
Civilization is a poorly fortified encampment in the midst of rebellious tribes.
Ritual is an instrument of the sacred. Every innovation is a profanation.
The supreme aristocrat is not the feudal lord in his castle but the contemplative monk in his cell.
All epochs exhibit the same vices, but not all show the same virtues. In every age there are hovels, but only in some are there palaces
Modern man is a prisoner who thinks he is free because he refrains from touching the walls of his dungeon.
There are not a few French historians who think that the history of the world is a chapter in the history of France.
Civilization seems to be the invention of a species now extinct.
As long as they do not take him seriously, the man who says the truth can live for a while in a democracy. Then, the hemlock.
Being of “divine right”? limited the monarch; the “representative of the people”? is the representative of absolute Absolutism.
No fairytale ever began this way: Once upon a time, there was a president…
Revolutions are frightening, but election campaigns are disgusting.
Liberty is the right to be different; equality is a ban on being different.
In the Christian obsessed with "social justice" it isn't easy to discern whether charity is flourishing or faith is expiring.
Egalitarian ideas distort our perception of the present and, in addition, mutilate our vision of the past.
Poetry is the fingerprint of God in human clay.
Nations and individuals, with rare exceptions, comport themselves with decency only when circumstances permit no other choice.
Optimism is never faith in progress, but hope for a miracle.
The importance of an event is inversely proportional to the space which the newspapers devote to it.
Politics is the pastime of empty souls.
It is unjust to reproach the writers of today with bad taste, when the very notion of taste is dead.
The anger of imbeciles is less frightening than their benevolence.
Total freedom of expression does not compensate for lack of talent.
"To be useful to society" is the ambition, or excuse, of a prostitute.
Every non-hierarchical society is divided in two.
The modern world seems invincible. Rather like the dinosaurs.
There is nothing more common than transforming a duty which inconveniences us into an "ethical problem."
To be intelligent without ideas is the privilege of the artist.
Hierarchies are celestial. In hell all are equal.
The itch to be original is an affectation caused by a lack of talent.
The liturgy can only be spoken definitively in Latin. In a vulgar tongue it is vulgar.
The number of votes which elect a ruler is not a measure of his legitimacy but of his mediocrity.
Adaptation to to the modern world requires sclerosis of sensibility and degradation of character.
To be unaware of the putrefaction of the modern world is a symptom of contagion by it.
God prefers an uncircumcised heart to a castrated mind.
Intellectual vulgarity attracts voters like flies.
History is a series of nights and days. Short days and protracted nights.

[doodle]

After reading wikipedia entry, Im not sure where to pigeonhole this guy...Philosopher theologist? Is he advocating for a theocracy?

From this decision resulted his strong criticism not only of left-wing but also of right-wing and conservative political practices, even though his explicitly reactionary principles show some similarities to conservative viewpoints. His skeptical anthropology was based on a close study of Thucydides and Jacob Burckhardt as well as his affirmation of hierarchical structures of order on society, state and church. Gómez Dávila emphatically criticised the concept of the sovereignty of the people as an illegitimate divinisation of man and a rejection of the sovereignty of God. He was likewise deeply critical of the Second Vatican Council which he saw as a deeply problematical adaptation to the world. He particularly deplored the destruction of the Latin liturgy in the Roman Catholic Church in the wake of the Council. Similar to Juan Donoso Cortés, Gómez Dávila believed that all political errors ultimately resulted from theological errors. That is why his thought can be described as a form of political theology.
The modern ideologies such as liberalism, democracy, and socialism, are the main targets of Gómez Dávila's corrosive and sharpsighted criticism, because the world influenced by these ideologies appeared to him decadent and corrupt.

[Ad Orientem]

I think he was a classical conservative or in British terms a classical Tory. Which is to say he rejected Whiggery and supported the old order based on a divinely ordered social structure sans separation of church and state. He was deeply and profoundly anti-modernist and anti-enlightenment. He was also (no surprise) a staunchly traditionalist Roman Catholic, i.e. no bongo drums and guitar Masses for him.

[MediumTex]

I think he was a classical conservative or in British terms a classical Tory. Which is to say he rejected Whiggery and supported the old order based on a divinely ordered social structure sans separation of church and state. He was deeply and profoundly anti-modernist and anti-enlightenment. He was also (no surprise) a staunchly traditionalist Roman Catholic, i.e. no bongo drums and guitar Masses for him.

It's surprising that someone who was so skeptical of so many human institutions would be part of something like the Catholic church.

[Ad Orientem]

It's very easily understandable to me. Remember to devout Catholics the Roman Church is The Church and it is of divine origin. To someone with his mindset Protestantism would be the very embodiment of enlightenment modernist liberalism, and therefor anathema.