"A hunter of sacred shades upon the eternal hills."

I posted some links to the aphorisms of Nicolás Gómez Dávila a while back. Well, that website has run out of material, but not without leaving a link to a translation of "The Authentic Reactionary," a short essay Gómez Dávila wrote near the end of his life. In that essay, Gómez Dávila charts a course between Marxist historical determinism and philosophically liberal conceptions of human freedom.

History [...] 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. Epochs do not have an irrevocable duration: the encounter with processes looming up from a greater depth can interrupt them; inertia of the will can prolong them. Conversion is possible, passivity ordinary. History is a necessity that freedom produces and chance destroys.

-Nicolás Gómez Dávila, "The Authentic Reactionary." Trans. R.V. Young. Modern Age 52:1.

One does not have to be alienated from contemporary culture to enjoy or make use of this vivid depiction of liberty-in-dialectic. Indeed, the clarity of Gómez Dávila's exposition could probably help in understanding certain profound non-reactionary thinkers.