Nicolás Gómez Dávila

Nicolás Gómez Dávila (Cajicá, Colombia, the May 18th 1913 - Bogotá, the May 17th 1994) was a Colombian moralist .

Biography

Born in a family from the Colombian elites, it passes part of its youth to Paris. During its childhood, because of a low register Pneumonia, there must remain confined to bed during two years, period during which he follows the courses of tutors and is caught passion for the traditional literature. Later, an accident of sports shirt breaks the hips to him.

Of return in Colombia in the years 1930, it never turns over to Europe thereafter, except for a six months stay in 1948, in company of his wife. Not having never attended the university, it consequently passes the majority of its time at his place, where it accumulates more 30 000 pounds in an impressive library.

In 1954, a first work is published by his/her brother: Noted I , a compilation of remarks and Aphorisme S which remained very largely been unaware of insofar as hundred specimens only of it had been drawn - they were intended to be offered to close relations.

Gómez Dávila writes a small collection of tests, Textos I , which is published in 1959 (as for Notas I , the second volume is never appeared). It develops to with it the basic concepts of its philosophical anthropology and its philosophy of the history, in a very required register of language, where the metaphors abound. It is in this work that it expresses for the first time its intention to create a “reactionary mixture”, a philosophical system not being able according to him to give an account of reality. In 1958, he sees himself offering the station of first to advise of the Colombian president, but refuses; when one proposes to him into 1974 to become ambassador with London, he also refuses. Even if it supports the president Alberto Lleras to have reversed the dictatorship of Rojas Pinilla, it never exerts any political office.

In fact, he criticizes the left as well as the political line and the conservatives, even if he mainly shares the point of view of the latter because of his principles reactionaries. It defends an anthropology skeptic, founded on a thorough study of Thucydide and Jacob Burckhardt, as well as the hierarchical structures which must order the company, the Church and the State. He vigorously criticizes the concept of sovereignty of the people, which are for him a deification of the man stripped of any legitimacy and a rejection of the sovereignty of God. In the same way, Gómez Dávila sees in the Concile Vatican II a very problematic adaption of the Church in the world. He particularly deplores the quasi-disappearance of the rite of saint Pie V celebrated in Latin, in the tread of the council. Like Juan Donoso the Cortes, Gómez Dávila thinks that all the political errors result lastly from theological errors. It is precisely for this reason that its thought can be regarded as a political form of theology.

The Liberalism, the Democracy and the Socialism, are the main targets of the sour criticism of Gómez Dávila; it estimates indeed that it is because of the influence of these contemporary ideologies that the world is declining and corrupted.

Gómez Dávila was interested in a great number of subjects, mainly of the questions of a nature philosophical or theological, but also literary, artistic or historical. Its style is characterized by the use of short sentences, or Scolie S, in which he comments on the world which surrounds it, in particular in five volumes of Escolios has a texto implícito (published successively in 1977,1986, and 1992). Its style approaches that of the French moralists like Rochefoucauld, Pascal, the Heather and Rivarol. It in a certain manner created a literary figure of the “Réactionnaire”, through which it thinks the modern world. In its last works, it tries to define in a positive way this “reactionary” to which it is identified; it places it beyond the opposition between right-hand side and left political. Being based on a influenced traditional Catholicism, inter alia, by the intellectual probity of Nietzsche, Gómez Dávila criticizes modernity, its work remaining for him a defense of a “truth which will never perish”.

It was never shown particularly interested by the fame which its work could acquire. In fact, its reputation started to grow truly only with the beginning of the year 1980, by the means of translations in German, then in French and Italian; the first to recognize the interest of its work were, inter alia, Robert Spaemann, Martin Mosebach, Botho Strauß, Reinhart Maurer, Ernst Jünger, Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, Rolf Schilling, Heiner Müller, Franco Volpi, Asfa-Wossen Asserate, Jean Raspail and Richard Dubreuil.

Quotations

Works

Original editions in Spanish

Noted I , Mexico City, 1954 (noncommercial edition); Bogotá, Villegas Editores, 2003.
Textos I , Bogotá, Leading Voluntad, 1959; Bogotá, Villegas Editores, 2002.
Escolios has a texto implícito , 2 volumes, Bogotá, Instituto Colombiano de Cultura, 1977.
Nuevos escolios has a texto implícito , 2 volumi, Bogotá, Procultura, Presidencia of República, Nueva Biblioteca Colombiana de Cultura, 1986.
Of iure , “Revista del Colegio Mayor de Nuestra Senora del Rosario” 81. Jg., NR. 542 (April-June 1988), p. 67-85.
Sucesivos escolios has a texto implícito , Santafé de Bogotá, Instituto Caro there Cuervo, 1992; Barcelona: 2002.
El reaccionario auténtico , “Revista of Universidad de Antioquia”, NR. 240 (April-June 1995), p. 16-19.
Escolios has a texto implícito , Selección, Bogotá, Villegas Editores, 2001. Antologia.

French Translations

horrors of the democracy - Scholiums for an implicit text - Follow-up of a captive angel of time by Free Volpi. Choice and foreword of Samuel Brussell. Translated from Spanish by Michel Bibard. Anatolia/Editions of the Rock, 2003. 383 p., 28€.
the Reactionary authenticates , Anatolia - Editions of the Rock, 2005. Choice of Samuel Brussell, foreword of Martin Mosebach. Translated from Spanish by Michel Bibard.

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