Étienne de La Boétie

Étienne or Estienne de La Boétie (French: [etjɛn də la bɔesi] (listen), also [bwati] or [bɔeti];[2] Occitan: Esteve de La Boetiá; 1 November 1530 – 18 August 1563) was a French judge, writer and "a founder of modern political philosophy in France".[3] He is best remembered as the great and close friend of the eminent essayist Michel de Montaigne "in one of history's most notable friendships",[3] as well as an earlier influence for anarchist thought.

Étienne de La Boétie
Born(1530-11-01)1 November 1530
Sarlat-la-Canéda, Périgord, France
Died18 August 1563(1563-08-18) (aged 32)
Germignan near Bordeaux, France
EraRenaissance philosophy
RegionWestern philosophy
SchoolRenaissance humanism
French literature
by category
French literary history
French writers
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Life

La Boétie was born in Sarlat, in the Périgord region of southwest France, in 1530 to an aristocratic family. His father was a royal official of the Périgord region and his mother was the sister of the president of the Bordeaux Parliament (assembly of lawyers). Orphaned at an early age, he was brought up by his uncle and namesake, the curate of Bouilbonnas, and received his law degree from the University of Orléans in 1553. His great and precocious ability earned La Boétie a royal appointment to the Bordeaux Parliament the following year, despite his being under the minimum age. There he pursued a distinguished career as judge and diplomatic negotiator until his untimely death in 1563 at the age of thirty-two. La Boétie was also a distinguished poet and humanist, translating Xenophon and Plutarch, and being closely connected with the leading young Pleiade group of poets, including Pierre Ronsard, Jean Dorat and Jean-Antoine de Baif.[3] La Boétie was favorable to the conciliation of Catholicism and Protestantism; "warned of the dangerous and divisive consequences of permitting two religions, which could lead to two opposed states in the same country. The most he would have allowed the Protestants was the right to worship in private, and he pointed out their own intolerance of Catholics. His policy for religious peace was one of conciliation and concord through reforms in the church that would eventually persuade the Protestants to reunite with Catholicism" [4]. He served with Montaigne in the Bordeaux parlement and is immortalized in Montaigne's essay on friendship.

Writings

La Boétie's writings include a few sonnets, translations from the classics and an essay attacking absolute monarchy and tyranny in general, Discours de la servitude volontaire ou le Contr'un (Discourse on Voluntary Servitude, or the Anti-Dictator). The essay asserts that tyrants have power because the people give it to them. Liberty has been abandoned once by society, which afterward stayed corrupted and prefers the slavery of the courtesan to the freedom of one who refuses to dominate as he refuses to obey. Thus, La Boétie linked together obedience and domination, a relationship which would be later theorised by latter anarchist thinkers. By advocating a solution of simply refusing to support the tyrant, he became one of the earliest advocates of civil disobedience and nonviolent resistance. Murray N. Rothbard summarizes La Boétie's political philosophy as follows:

To him, the great mystery of politics was obedience to rulers. Why in the world do people agree to be looted and otherwise oppressed by government overlords? It is not just fear, Boetie explains in "The Discourse on Voluntary Servitude," for our consent is required. And that consent can be non-violently withdrawn.[3]

It was once thought following Montaigne's claims that La Boétie wrote the essay in 1549 at the age of eighteen, but recent authorities argue that it is "likely that the Discourse was written in 1552 or 1553, at the age of twenty-two, while La Boétie was at the university".[5] Some Montaigne scholars have argued that the essay was in fact the work of Montaigne himself. The essay was circulated privately and not published until 1576 after La Boétie's death. He died in Germignan near Bordeaux in 1563. His last days are described in a long letter from Montaigne to his own father.

Influence

In the 20th century, many European anarchists began to cite La Boétie as an influence, including Gustav Landauer, Bart de Ligt and Simone Weil.[6] Autonomist Marxist thinker John Holloway also cites him in his book Crack Capitalism in order to explain his idea of "breaking with capitalism".[7] Gene Sharp, the leading theorist of nonviolent struggle, cites his work frequently in both The Politics of Nonviolent Action and From Dictatorship to Democracy.

  • Discours de la servitude volontaire
  • Œuvres complètes (Complete Works), 1892
  • La Boétie's home at Sarlat
  • Birthplace of La Boétie

Bibliography
  • Œuvres complètes, Editions William Blake & Co., 1991. ISBN 2-905810-60-2.
  • Discours de la servitude volontaire, Editions Mille et une nuits, 1997. ISBN 2-910233-94-4.
  • Discours de la servitude volontaire, Editions Flammarion, 1993. ISBN 2-08-070394-3.
  • The Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude, translated by Harry Kurz and with an introduction by Murray Rothbard, Montrèal/New York/London: Black Rose Books, 1997. ISBN 1-55164-089-9.
  • The Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude, translated by Harry Kurz and with an introduction by Murray Rothbard, Free Life Editions, 1975. ISBN 0-914156-11-X.
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References
  1. Saul Newman. "Voluntary Servitude Reconsidered: Radical Politics and the Problem of Self-Domination"
  2. Paul Bonnefon (1892). Œuvres complètes d'Estienne de La Boétie (Bordeaux: C. Gounouilhou, and Paris: J. Rouam et Cie.), pp. 385–386 (available online in pdf format at Gallica).
  3. Murray Rothbard. "Ending Tyranny Without Violence".
  4. Zagorin, Perez. (2013). How the Idea of Religious Toleration Came to the West. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-1306142809. OCLC 863671693.
  5. Rockwell, Lew (11 February 2011), p. 38. n. 2. "Having remained long in manuscript, the actual date of writing the Discourse of Voluntary Servitude remains a matter of dispute. It seems clear, however, and has been so accepted by recent authorities, that Montaigne's published story that La Boétie wrote the Discourse at the age of eighteen or even of sixteen was incorrect. Montaigne's statement, as we shall see further below, was probably part of his later campaign to guard his dead friend's reputation by dissociating him from the revolutionary Huguenots who were claiming La Boétie's pamphlet for their own. Extreme youth tended to cast the Discourse in the light of a work so youthful that the radical content was hardly to be taken seriously as the views of the author. Internal evidence as well as the erudition expressed in the work make it likely that the Discourse was written in 1552 or 1553, at the age of twenty-two, while La Boétie was at the university." See Paul Bonnefon (1892), pp. 390–391; and Donald Frame, Montaigne: A Biography (New York: Harcourt Brace, & World, 1965), p. 71 (37–38 n. 2).
  6. Roland Bleiker (2000), ''Popular Dissent. Human Agency and Global Politics. Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0521778298 (pp. 86–87).
  7. John Holloway. Crack Capitalism. Pluto Press (2010). p. 6. ISBN 0-7453-3008-8, 978-0745330082.

Further reading
  • Keohane, Nannerl O. (1977). 'The Radical Humanism of Étienne de la Boétie', Journal of the History of Ideas. 38:119–30.
  • Lablénie, Edmond (1930). 'L'Énigme de la "Servitude Volontaire"', Revue du seizième siècle. 17:203–27 [French].
  • Podoksik, Efraim (2003). 'Estienne de La Boëtie and the Politics of Obedience', Bibliothèque d'Humanisme et Renaissance. LXV(1): 83–95.
  • Presley, Sharon (2008). "La Boétie, Etienne de (1530–1563)". In Hamowy, Ronald (ed.). La Boétie, Étienne de (1530–1563). The Encyclopedia of Libertarianism. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage/Cato Institute. p. 277. doi:10.4135/9781412965811.n165. ISBN 978-1412965804. LCCN 2008009151. OCLC 750831024.
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