Motus Mentis

From “The Authentic Reactionary“, by NicolÁ¡s GÁ³mez DÁ¡vila (1913”“1994):

History is a necessity that freedom produces and chance destroys.

This is a beautiful formulation: our freely chosen actions put in train an expanding system of consequences that, being beyond the control of any individual and therefore subject to an irreducibly complex web of contingency, lie beyond the scope of human agency to predict or control. Why is this process a “necessity”? Because we cannot but live and act — and react.

In this essay GÁ³mez DÁ¡vila defines the authentic reactionary as one who, at the same time, condemns the entropic flow of history but resigns himself to acceptance. This resignation puts him at odds with both the radical and the liberal liberal progressive.

To GÁ³mez DÁ¡vila, the radical progressive sees the dialectic advance of history as reflecting the inexorable unfolding of reason in the world, and therefore not a thing to be condemned; one cannot coherently accept the necessity of history and object to it:

For the radical progressive, then, to condemn history is not just a vain undertaking, but also a foolish undertaking. A vain undertaking because history is necessity; a foolish undertaking because history is reason.

We see this attitude summed up again and again in the phrases “the right side of history”, and bromides about the “arc of the moral Universe” “bending toward Justice”.

Meanwhile, for the liberal progressive, history is contingent upon the action of the will, and so we are under a moral compulsion not to accept history as necessity. The reactionary’s condemnation of history compels him not just to observe with disapproval, but to act:

Revolutionary action epitomizes the ethical obligation of the liberal progressive, because to break down what impedes it is the essential act of liberty as it is realized. History is an inert material that a sovereign will fashions. For the liberal progressive, then, to resign oneself to history is an immoral and foolish attitude. Foolish because history is freedom; immoral because liberty is our essence.

The reactionary is, nevertheless, the fool who takes up the vanity of condemning history and the immorality of resigning himself to it. Radical progressivism and liberal progressivism elaborate partial visions. History is neither necessity nor freedom, but rather their fl exible integration. History is not, in fact, a divine monstrosity. The human cloud of dust does
not seem to arise as if beneath the breath of a sacred beast; the epochs do not seem to be ordered as stages in the embryogenesis of a metaphysical animal; facts are not imbricated one upon another as scales on a heavenly fish.

But if history is not an abstract system that germinates beneath implacable laws, neither is it the docile fodder of human madness. The whimsical and arbitrary will of man is not its
supreme ruler. Facts are not shaped, like sticky, pliable paste, between industrious fingers.

In fact, history results neither from impersonal necessity nor from human caprice, but rather from a dialectic of the will where free choice unfolds into necessary consequences. History does not develop as a unique and autonomous dialectic, which extends in vital dialectic the dialectic of inanimate nature, but rather as a pluralism of dialectical processes, numerous as free acts and tied to the diversity of their fleshly grounds. If liberty is the creative act of history, if each free act produces a new history, the free creative act is cast upon the world in an irrevocable process. Liberty secretes history as a metaphysical spider secretes the geometry of its web. Liberty is, in fact, alienated from itself in the same gesture in which it is assumed, because free action possesses a coherent structure, an internal organization, a regular proliferation of sequelae. The act unfolds, opens up, and expands into necessary consequences, in a manner compatible with its intimate character and with its intelligible nature. Every act submits a piece of the world to a specific configuration.

History, therefore, is an assemblage of freedoms hardened in dialectical processes. The deeper the layer whence free action gushes forth, the more varied are the zones of activity that the process determines, and the greater its duration. The superficial, peripheral act is expended in biographical episodes, while the central, profound act can create an epoch for an entire society. History is articulated, thus, in instants and epochs: in free acts and in dialectical processes. Instants are its fleeting soul, epochs its tangible body. Epochs stretch out like distances between two instants: its seminal instant, and the instant when the inchoate act of a new life brings it to a close. Upon hinges of freedom swing gates of bronze.

GÁ³mez DÁ¡vila proposes that this admixture of freedom and necessity means that historically effective acts of reactionary will are possible only at what he calls the “fissures” of the historical process:

[W]hile the dialectical process in which freedoms have been poured out lasts, the freedom of the nonconformist is twisted into an ineffectual rebellion. Social freedom is not a permanent option, but rather an unforeseen auspiciousness in the conjunction of affairs. The exercise of freedom supposes an intelligence responsive to history because confronting an entire society alienated from liberty, man can only lie in wait for the noisy crackup of necessity. Every intention is thwarted if it is not introduced into the principal fissures of a life.

In the face of history ethical obligation to take action only arises when the conscience consents to a purpose that momentarily prevails, or when circumstances culminate in a conjunction propitious to our freedom. The man whom destiny positions in an epoch without a foreseeable end, the character of which wounds the deepest fibers of his being, cannot heedlessly sacrifice his repugnance to his boldness, nor his intelligence to his vanity. The spectacular, empty gesture earns public applause, but the disdain of those governed by reflection. In the shadowlands of history, man ought to resign himself to patiently undermining human presumption. Man is able, thus, to condemn necessity without contradicting himself, although he is unable to take action except when necessity collapses.

In other words, “there is a tide in the affairs of men”, and action is doomed to ineffectiveness except when it is taken at the flood (although perhaps it would be truer to GÁ³mez DÁ¡vila’s argument to suggest that it must be taken at the ebb).

The outstanding, and most contentious, questions on the modern Right — from ordinary conservatives to those of us in the remote fastnesses of neoreaction — are: What ought we to do? Ought we to do anything at all? Is political activism, the habitual mode of the Left, an appropriate response for the Right?

Perhaps the question ought to be: Where stands the tide?