Scholia for a Free Society

# What the essay sets out Itxu Diaz diagnoses a persistent clash between traditionalists and defenders of liberty. He argues that this clash has produced valuable debates and frequent missed opportunities. Diaz suggests revisiting certain thinkers labelled "reactionary" because they mount rigorous critiques of modernity that can still aid contemporary defenders of freedom.

# Who matters here: Nicolás Gómez Dávila

Dávila's output is not long systematic treatises but thousands of short, densely written "scholia"—brief aphorisms that condense larger arguments about politics, culture, and spirituality. Diaz highlights three practical features of Dávila's work:

• Accessibility: his short form can be read quickly while still carrying intellectual weight.
• Nuance: his critique of modernity does not collapse into an apology for authoritarianism or fascism.
• Spiritual focus: Dávila's deepest concerns are moral and spiritual rather than purely political, which limits the tendency toward programmatic authoritarian solutions.

# How traditionalists criticized "liberalism" Diaz stresses that many traditionalist and reactionary writers attacked a historically specific form of liberalism: the variant associated with the French Revolution, anticlericalism, rationalism, and the destruction of the Ancien Régime. That context matters.

• Joseph de Maistre, Juan Donoso Cortés, and others launched their attacks against the upheavals of nineteenth-century Europe, not against later U.S.-style liberal institutions that evolved in different circumstances.
• Donoso Cortés argued that nineteenth-century European liberalism could be a precursor to socialism because it secularized authority and exalted individual autonomy in ways that eroded mediating institutions.

# Common ground between reactionaries and liberal conservatives

• They sharpen criticisms of modern secularization, bureaucratic expansion, and cultural flattening that liberals and conservatives alike may recognize as threats to freedom.
• Their focus on spiritual and cultural foundations of social order supplies arguments against technocratic or purely instrumental approaches to politics.

# Practical takeaway for contemporary conservatives and libertarians

# Bottom line Diaz recommends recovering overlooked reactionary thinkers—above all Nicolás Gómez Dávila—as readable, disciplined critics of modernity who can help craft a defense of freedom attentive to culture, spirituality, and the limits of political solutions.