An elegant English version of La Boetie's _Discourse on Voluntary Servitude_, which is both a key to understanding much of Montaigne and a major piece of early modern political thought. --Timothy Hampton, Professor of French and Comparative Literature, University of California, Berkeley.

This volume contains five articles by prominent scholars of French literature and political philosophy that examine the relation between Montaigne's Essays, one ...

Nul n'est plus fuyant que le mauvais goût. Qu'il soit relatif, ancré dans son temps, frontière sociale ou revendiqué tel une profession de foi artistique. Dans ce Dictionnaire amoureux intime et partial, Nicolas d'Estienne d'Orves vous invite dans son grenier braillard et cocasse. 'Le mauvais goût échappe à toute définition, famille ou clan. Tout comme le bon goût, il est relatif, circonstanciel, ancré dans son temps. Il peut également être une frontière sociale, un racisme de classe. En ce cas, (...) le mauvais goût c'est celui de l'autre, celui qu'on n'a pas et qu'on se défend d'avoir au risque de trahir les siens. Enfin il y a le mauvais goût patenté, revendiqué, qui n'est pas une attitude, une mode, mais une profession de foi artistique, un manifeste esthétique. C'est -sans doute- ce qu'on pourrait appeler le kitsch. C'est-à-dire un style en soi, des formes volontaires, pensées, destinées à déranger la norme. Ce livre sera donc, par essence, partial. Avec le mauvais goût, j'entre dans une zone marécageuse. Est-il possible de faire un livre plus intime, plus narcissique, puisqu'il explore la part d'ombre de ma propre sensibilité? Petit enfant sous Giscard, adolescent sous Mitterrand, j'ai pris racine dans des époques aux esthétiques très contrastées qui seront forcément présentes dans ces pages. Souvenirs intimes, émissions de télévision, films, livres, plats, commerces, personnages imaginaires ou pas, attitudes de tous poils, mon mauvais goût est une auberge qui n'a rien d'espagnole mais tout d'un grenier. Un grenier braillard et cocasse, que j'ai moi-même tenté de ranger pour les besoins de la cause. Le mauvais goût ne se partage pas, en ce qu'il est une exploration de nos propres frontières esthétiques, la ligne de crête entre ce que l'on goûte et ce que l'on recrache. Bienvenue dans mon train fantôme!'"--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

The 16th-century French humanist writer Etienne de La Boétie has not often been considered in literature on republican political thought, despite his famous essay, Discours de la Servitude Volontaire, displaying a number of clear republican tropes and themes, being largely concerned with the problem of arbitrary power embodied in the figure of the tyrant. Yet, I argue that the real significance of La Boétie’s text is in his radical concept of voluntary servitude and the way it adds a new dimension (...) to the neo-republican theory of liberty as non-domination. The problem of self-domination or wilful obedience to authority is a form of ideological domination that Pettit’s understanding of arbitrary power relationships between agents does not adequately account for. Furthermore, La Boétie shows that freedom is an ontological condition and is realised not – or not entirely – through the rule of law as the guarantee against arbitrariness, as neo-republicans advocate, but rather through acts of self-emancipation and civil disobedience. Here I understand La Boétie’s thinking in terms of a certain anarcho-republicanism in which the promotion of freedom depends not so much on institutions, as Pettit suggests, but rather on autonomous relations of friendship, love and solidarity between individuals. (shrink)

O presente artigo analisa a evolução de um novo ideal republicano no contexto das guerras de religião do século XVI francês. Para tal, concentra-se em dois textos: o Discurso sobre a servidão voluntária, de La Boétie, cujo essencial se supõe ter sido redigido por volta de 1548, e os Ensaios, de Montaigne, cuja primeira edição data de 1580. Demonstra, com isso, que Montaigne transfere os ideais republicanos de La Boétie a um contexto novo, passando de um ethos republicano herdado do (...) humanismo renascentista para um ethos que se pode anacronicamente qualificar de “liberal”. (shrink)

The article takes into account the exceptionality of Étienne de La Boétie’s Discourse on Voluntary Servitude sur la servitude volontaire within its historical context, when compared to other anti-tyrannical essays published in Sixteenth-Century France. The Discourse can be read as a sort of anachronistic criticism of the modern theory of sovereignty, since it connects the birth of a monar-chical power with the presence in every man of a desire to be identified with “the name of the One”. However, this process (...) of hallucinatory identification with a “master”, to whom the individual sacrifices his own singularity, can be fought by the capacity of human language to build a net of co-operation among men, which overthrows any close and static identity between individuals and power. Thus freedom appears to be not a natural and stable possess, but rather an uninterrupted and risky process of collective emancipation. (shrink)

Le Discours de la servitude volontaire est généralement lu comme un texte dénonçant la structure pyramidale du pouvoir politique en tant que tel. Or nous savons que cet auteur a été un parlementaire très respectueux du droit et plutôt conservateur. Comment concilier ces données apparemment opposées? Une clef possible serait de replacer le Discours dans le contexte d’un débat qui concerne l’émergence du pouvoir absolu à travers la culture curiale mise en place en Italie et en France au tournant du (...) xv e et du xvi e siècle. (shrink)

This study undertakes a reading of Etienne de La Boétie’s Discours de la servitude volontaire, endeavoring to bring to light the way it convergences with and diverges from the political thought of Paul Ricœur, around the central concept of the will. On the basis of the twin notions of “denaturation” and of “pathology,” a course unfolds which aims at helping establish the people, in comparison with the institution of the State, through a political process revitalised by friendship. But the two (...) thinkers differ when it comes to the resources of the will. This is reflected in the notion of freedom, conceived as absolute in La Boetie, while Ricœur emphasizes its contingency, which leads him to thematize it in terms of capabilities. (shrink)

Étienne de La Boétie (1530–63) is a central, if enigmatic, figure in modern French political philosophy. While his name is most famous for his friendship with Montaigne, his Discours de la servitude volontaire (Discourse of Voluntary Servitude) is a tour-de-force of humanist political writing, a youthful paean to liberty arguing that subjection to tyrants is the result of popular corruption. This article argues that the text can be read as a reflection on the perils and promise of transparency. Reading La (...) Boétie helps us see two radically different ways in which members of a polity can be known to one another – two models of transparency – and it offers an important, but ultimately unsettling, political ideal based on a classical conception of civic friendship. The article draws out the importance of this ideal for modern anti-corruption efforts. (shrink)

El objetivo de este artículo es el análisis crítico del concepto de “servidumbre voluntaria” y sus implicaciones para la libertad que plantea Étienne de la Boétie y su relación con el deseo natural de libertad. En particular se analizan algunas ideas de la obra Discours de la servitude volontaire (1576) comenzando por una introducción general y las implicaciones de la obra en la historia de las ideas políticas. La parte central radica en el problema que plantea para la sociedad el (...) deseo de servir de los hombres o, en otras palabras: el deseo de esclavitud y rechazo de la libertad. Todo ello va contra la naturaleza humana según La Boétie. Estos problemas son los que se discuten a partir de un planteamiento de teoría política que va contra el “pensamiento único” y que destaca algunos de los errores conceptuales del autor desde la óptica de la “realidad política” y la poca relevancia que tienen los estándares de perfección para una organización político-social factible. (shrink)

A superb achievement, one that successfully brings together in accessible form the work of two major writers of Renaissance France. This is now the default version of Montaigne in English. --Timothy Hampton, Professor of French and Comparative Literature, University of California, Berkeley.

One of the key concepts in XVIII century political thought was despotism. Also Diderot utilised this complex idea. According to him, who followed Hobbes and Montesquieu, despotism was the result of the love of power, which was able to bring forth the passion of fear in the society. In this sense, Machiavelli belonged to this line of reflection: like that of Hobbes, his system was intended to show the danger of despotism and to learn the true foundation of natural law. (...) But rethinking this paradox Diderot was led to elaborate a new theory of despotism, no longer based on the mechanism of power. His interpretation of Machiavelli – and Hobbes – had opened up a new perspective, which did not move from the enigma of power – Machiavelli's and Hobbes’ chief concern – but from the nature of subjection. Along this path Diderot came across de la Boëtie's Discours de la servitude volontaire, which explained the origin of despotism in a different way. Despotism was not the result of the passion of fear, but of that of interest. The discussion of these two different ideas of despotism led Diderot to a new perspective from which he answered the problem of liberty in an original way. (shrink)

I investigate the contemporary problem of obedience through an exploration of Michel Foucault and Étienne de La Boétie, showing how the former drew on the latter’s concept of voluntary servitude as a way of thinking through the paradoxical relationship between power, freedom and subjectivity. My argument is that Foucault’s theory of government as the ‘conduct of conduct’ may be understood as a reflection on the question of voluntary servitude. My aim here is twofold. First, it is to show that obedience (...) is an ethical and political problem just as relevant today as it was in La Boétie’s time. Secondly, it is to suggest that voluntary servitude should be interpreted in an emancipatory way, as a problematic that reveals the ontological primacy of freedom and the fragility and instability of power. ‘Voluntary inservitude’ is something that can be expressed in acts of civil disobedience, and alternate modes of ethical conduct and association. (shrink)

The death of Montaigne is described in some important documents such as the correspondence between Pierre de Brach, Justus Lipsius and Marie de Gournay, as well as in another letter written by Pasquier. What these «lettres du deuil» do is to reconstruct the philosophical meaning of death, using an entire universe of symbols to represent it. Previously, Montaigne had himself been the only person to witness La Boétie's death, of which he had deconstructed the abstract, merely speculative image in order (...) to emphasize its human dimension. (shrink)

Sous l'Ancien Regime, les champs semantiques de la preuve sont aussi complexes et plastiques que ses usages. La notion circule et innerve des pratiques tres diverses, parfois de maniere inattendue. La plaidoirie ou le requisitoire reorganisent les faits, creant des fables qui s'eloignent quelquefois de la realite et qui tendent a transformer la verite en mensonge et le mensonge en verite. Ces ressorts sont aussi ceux de la fiction qui exploite toutes les ressources de la probation ou preuve et signe (...) viennent a se confondre. Dans d'autres domaines, pour assurer le passage de liaisons necessaires entre des elements divers qui conduisent a la certitude, a l'analyse morale qui s'appuie sur des relations probables pour etablir l'innocence ou la culpabilite, il faut s'etre approprie un art de la demonstration qui, ayant traverse la metaphysique et les mathematiques, parvient au droit. Ce passage-la marque le role historiquement grandissant de la probabilite dans la prise de decision et dans la conception de la verite. Le present volume interroge les lineaments semantiques et les usages de la notion de preuve, du XVIe au XVIIIe siecle, essentiellement en France et en Grande-Bretagne. Les etudes qui le composent suggerent que ces divers usages constituent l'un des aspects du long processus de division des savoirs. Jean-Pierre Schandeler est charge de recherche CNRS a l'IRCL. Ses travaux portent sur les rapports entre l'histoire et les sciences morales et politiques au XVIIIe siecle. Nathalie Vienne-Guerrin est professeur a l'universite Paul-Valery Montpellier 3, specialiste de Shakespeare. Elle dirige l'Institut de Recherche sur la Renaissance, l'age Classique et les Lumieres (UMR 5186 du CNRS). (shrink)

The Latin translation of Sextus Empiricus’ ‘Outlines of Pyrrhonism’, published by Henri Estienne in 1562, are amongst the most influential texts in the history of scepticism. And yet, we still lack a complete and detailed study of their reception in modern times. Through investigation of the emblem on the frontispiece of the book, this paper argues that Estienne’s motivations for the publication should be interpreted as essentially anti-dogmatic and humanistic in nature. -/- .

Is there a thought of voluntary servitude in Spinoza’s theory? Starting with tensions arising from the apparent contradiction between such a thought and Spinoza’s anthropology, this paper shows that the Tractatus Theologico-politicus’s author identifies some political conditions that lead to the reversal of the conatus and make men fight “for their servitude as if it were their salvation”. Spinoza dampens La Boetie’s hypothesis : a man or a people cannot want to enslave himself/themselves, but can be induced to do it (...) under the effect of the adoption of a certain politics or institution. It is not only the fear the monarchical regime breeds. The foundation of the Hebrew Republic, after the Jewish people left Egypt, also raises the issue of voluntary servitude. Spinoza’s thought, consequently, shows a discerning political rationalism that can help us today to think about the “hidden external causes” which can weaken, even conflict with the desire for freedom. (shrink)

A growing interest in Claude Lefort is bringing to light his radical insights on modern democracy, totalitarianism, and human rights. While the notion perhaps most closely associated with Lefort is that of ‘the empty place of power,’ this article offers a reading of Lefort from a unique angle: his concept of the myth of the One. I demonstrate that to Lefort, the phantasmagorical appeal of the One – the desire for harmony, unity and stability – is the force that continually (...) endangers the democratic project, while the distinctive and unavoidable characteristic of democratic society is its ‘inability’ to name itself as One – a coherent and established social self. Thus, the main challenge of society is its symbolic self-institution. The discussion illuminates Lefort’s singular stance in the study of totalitarianism (Arendt), his rejection of the imaginary (next to Castoriadis), his debt to the structuralism scheme (Lévi-Strauss), as well as his conversation with anarchist voices (La Boétie, Clastres) and with psychoanalysis (Lacan). Ultimately, what Lefort coins ‘symbolic division’ condenses the pledge of democracy to embrace a neurotic self, a bodiless body, a nameless identity in an empty space of power. As such, Lefort’s anti-myth of the One promises to be a vexing objective. (shrink)

Il est arrivé que l’on compare Machiavel à La Boétie pour grossièrement les opposer, selon l’idée fausse que le premier serait du côté du prince, et le second du côté du peuple. Nous proposons, ici, une étude comparative de leurs pensées qui se concentre sur leur manière de lire les Anciens et de se situer vis-à-vis de la culture humaniste de leur époque, pour mieux saisir adéquatement leurs différences et leurs similitudes.

Por que o nome do um encanta? Não será porque, mesmo ao preço do mais cruel sofrimento, os homens têm nele a ilusão de guardarem sua própria nomeação e, ao mesmo tempo, permanecerem associados? La Boétie parece ensinar, assim, que os homens perdem a liberdade, mas não o desejo de se tornarem livres.

Les Cahiers La Boétie accueillent des travaux interdisciplinaires explorant tous les aspects et les enjeux de l'oeuvre de La Boétie.

O presente ensaio apresenta como ponto de partida o conto "Cadeira", do escritor português José Saramago, para ilustrar a contínua atualidade do estudo "Amizade, recusa do servir" da professora e filósofa Marilena Chaui, publicado em 1982 pela editora Brasiliense como posfácio da obra "Discurso da servidão voluntária", de Étienne de La Boétie. Nossa intenção é partir da alegoria saramaguiana da queda da ditadura salazarista em Portugal para mostrar como o pensamento de La Boétie, especialmente quando analisado por Chaui, trespassa incólume (...) séculos inteiros chegando até a contemporaneidade europeia e brasileira e que possíveis caminhos alternativos a este sistema podem se apresentar. (shrink)

Freedom as a natural right, the importance of consent, defending the idea that government should be in the hands of the most virtuous and reflective citizens, denouncing patronage, the need to link individual and political freedom ? These are some of the characteristics of La Boétie's doctrine that I believe place him within the tradition that Quentin Skinner calls the neo-Roman conception of civil liberty. Of course, La Boétie did not write a positive defence of the rule of law, as (...) Livy did in his History of Rome and as the English republicans do, but the Discourse can easily be read as a legal plea condemning absolute monarchy and any kind of arbitrary regime. (shrink)