The Discourse on Voluntary Servitude (French: Discours de la servitude volontaire) is an essay by Étienne de La Boétie. The text was published clandestinely in 1577.
 | |
| Author | Étienne de La Boétie |
|---|---|
| Original title | Discours de la servitude volontaire |
| Language | Middle French |
| Genre | Essay |
Publication date | 1577 |
| Publication place | Kingdom of France |
The date of preparation of the Discourse on Voluntary Servitude is uncertain: according to recent studies it was composed by Étienne de La Boétie during his university education. According to his closest friend Michel de Montaigne, the speech was written when La Boétie was about 18 years old.[1]
Content
editThe essay argues that any tyrant remains in power while his subjects grant him that, therefore delegitimizing every form of power. The original freedom of men would be indeed abandoned by society which, once corrupted by the habit, would have preferred the servitude of the courtier to the freedom of the free man, who refuses to be submissive and to obey.
Bibliography
edit- 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
References
edit- ^ Murray Rothbard, Introduction to The Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude by Étienne de la Boétie, translated by Harry Kurz, New York: Free Life Editions, 1975, note 4, republished by the Mises Institute 2002: "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 Bonnefon, op. cit., pp. xxxvi-xxvii;"
Further reading
edit- Abensour, Miguel (2011). "Is there a proper way to use the voluntary servitude hypothesis?". Journal of Political Ideologies. 16 (3): 329–348. doi:10.1080/13569317.2011.607299. ISSN 1356-9317.
- Keohane, Nannerl O. (1977). "The Radical Humanism of Étienne de la Boétie". Journal of the History of Ideas. 38 (1): 119–130. doi:10.2307/2708844. JSTOR 2708844. LCCN 0022-5037.
- Marshall, Peter H. (2008) [1992]. "The French Renaissance and Enlightenment". Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism. London: Harper Perennial. pp. 108–128. ISBN 978-0-00-686245-1. OCLC 218212571.
- Mazzocchi, Paul (2018). "Desire, Friendship, and the Politics of Refusal: The Utopian Afterlives of La Boétie's Discourse on Voluntary Servitude". Utopian Studies. 29 (2): 248–266. doi:10.5325/utopianstudies.29.2.0248. ISSN 1045-991X.
- Newman, Paul (2022a). "La Boétie and republican liberty: Voluntary servitude and non-domination". European Journal of Political Theory. 21 (1): 134–154. doi:10.1177/1474885119863141. ISSN 1474-8851.
- Newman, Paul (2022b). "Power, Freedom and Obedience in Foucault and La Boétie: Voluntary Servitude as the Problem of Government". Theory, Culture & Society. 39 (1): 123–141. doi:10.1177/02632764211024333. ISSN 0263-2764.
- Presley, Sharon (2008). "La Boétie, Étienne de (1530–1563)". In Hamowy, Ronald (ed.). The Encyclopedia of Libertarianism. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE; Cato Institute. p. 277. doi:10.4135/9781412965811.n165. ISBN 978-1-4129-6580-4. LCCN 2008009151. OCLC 750831024.
- Romele, Alberto; Gallino, Francesco; Emmenegger, Camilla; Gorgone, Daniele (2017). "Panopticism is not Enough: Social Media as Technologies of Voluntary Servitude". Surveillance & Society. 15 (2): 204–221. doi:10.24908/ss.v15i2.6021. ISSN 1477-7487.
- Rothbard, Murray (1975). "The Political Thought of Étienne de La Boétie". The Politics of Obedience: "The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude". Free Life Editions. pp. 9–42. ISBN 0-914156-10-1. LCCN 75-10120. OCLC 1974998.
External links
edit- Anti-Dictator public domain audiobook at LibriVox
