Near 500 Years later, La Boétie still fuels revolt

[RidleyReport]

"Resolve to serve no more, and you are at once freed."

With those words, and a brief, brilliant legal career, Étienne de la Boétie set the stage for centuries of resistance to tyranny. That resistance played out just down the street in Nashua, New Hampshire, even as freedom lovers were announcing an award for the long-dead "freedom philosopher."

"I do not ask that you place hands upon the tyrant to topple him over," he wrote, "but simply that you support him no longer; then you will behold him, like a great Colossus whose pedestal has been pulled away, fall of his own weight and break in pieces."

These legendary phrases have repeatedly reached out from the 16th century and inspired revolts of nearly every kind. Today, they inspired another milestone for the French writer.

"The Politics of Obedience is certainly worthy of the honor it receives," says Jeremy Furbish of FreedomBookClub.com

Furbish, or more accurately the folks who use his website, just awarded La Boétie's classic "Book of the Year" for 2009. The prize goes to books which rank the highest on surveys conducted throughout the year at FreedomBookClub.com.

As talk show host Gardner Goldsmith announced this award at the New Hampshire Liberty Forum...he reminded his audience that two of their number were missing, having just been arrested a few miles away. They were protesting the seizure of a pot smoker, using La Boétie's formula of peaceful non-cooperation. Both were released that night.

"The Politics of Obedience: the Discourse of Voluntary Servitude," was written while La Boétie was a law student at the University of Orleans. It was a free-thinking hot spot of its time. His teacher was branded a heretic and died at the stake during a Huguenot rebellion in 1559.

"The Politics of Obedience, in its very timelessness, made the work ever available to be applied," continues Furbish. La Boétie was heavily influential in the Huguenot uprisings in later 16th century

France and the enlightenment of the 18th and 19th centuries. Furbish believes he had a profound impact on Gandhi as well.

Other books vanquished but honored in this contest:

Fela: The Life and Times of an African Musical Icon, by Michael E. Veal

What Has Government Done to Our Money, and the Case for a 100 Percent Gold Dollar, by Murray N. Rothbard

I Must Speak Out: The Best of the Voluntaryist, by Carl Watner

The Market for Liberty, by Linda and Morris Tannehill

Live Free of Die: Essays on Liberty by New Hampshire Libertarians by Gardner Goldsmith and Paul Goldsmith

Alongside Night, by J. Neil Schulman

Against Intellectual Monopoly, by David K. Levine and Michele Boldrin

Drop Dead Gorgeous, by Wayne Simmons

Songs of Freedom: Tales from the Revolution, by Darryl W. Perry, Jim

Davidson, Tom Woods, Voltairine de Cleyre (and more)

End the Fed, by Ron Paul

Our Enemy, The State, by Albert Jay Nock

Ultimately La Boétie's , seemingly ancient efforts outshone all these prodigies in the contest. He was a mighty butterfly, whose wing-flapping half-a-millennium in the past...continues to trigger hurricanes of noncooperation.

For more information:

http://FreedomBookClub.com

Diggable at:

http://digg.com/political_opinion/Near_500_Years_later_La_Boetie_still_fuels_revolt

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Sorry for the delay in getting this set visible. I don't look at the Articles section very often.

Michael

[George H. Smith]

There is a considerable body of evidence suggesting that the true author of On Voluntary Servitude (a more accurate translation of the original title) was not Étienne de la Boétie, but rather his close friend and great essayist Montaigne.

On Voluntary Servitude was published anonymously in the 1570s, and Montaigne attributed it to his dead friend. This is the sole basis for believing that Boétie (a French jurist and humanist) wrote the piece, and this belief doesn't fit well with other things we know about Boétie's political beliefs, which tended to be authoritarian. It is quite possible that Montaigne, who was a very cautious man, did not want to bring the wrath of the French government -- which at that time was engaged in a vicious "war of religion" with the Huguenots (i.e., French Calvinists) -- down upon his own head.

There are several good articles on this topic in Freedom Over Servitude: Montaigne, La Boétie, and On Voluntary Servitude, edited by David Lewis Schaefer (Greenwood Press, 1998). I especially recommend Daniel Martin's article (Chapter Five), "Montaigne: Author of On Voluntary Servitude."

There is much more to this problem than I have indicated here.

Ghs

[Greybird]

Whoever may have written this, it's frigging brilliant, even after half a millennium.

And you can actually read the essay, in a single sitting, here.

You can also read Murray Rothbard's scintillating commentary upon it here.

Edited April 12, 2010 by Greybird

[George H. Smith]

Whoever may have written this, it's frigging brilliant, even after half a millennium.

I agree. Whoever actually wrote the piece is a secondary consideration for most purposes; it is of interest mainly to historians of ideas.

This controversy caught my attention around five years ago, while I was browsing the stacks of the ISU library. I checked out several of the relevant books, xeroxed a few journal articles, and read through them. This is outside my area of expertise, so I don't have a settled opinon on the matter, but I thought Dave Ridley might find it of interest.

One benefit of reading this material, apart from who really wrote the piece, is that it sheds light on the historical context in which the piece was written. The political literature of that period, in which the notion of the right of resistance against unjust authority underwent some important developments, is fascinating.

Ghs