"The Discourse On Voluntary Servitude"
by Paul Rosenberg
"Following are key passages from "The Discourse on Voluntary Servitude," by Étienne de la Boétie (1530-1563), who was a French judge, writer, political philosopher and friend of Michel de Montaigne, one of the most influential writers of their era. Montaigne reported that La Boétie wrote this essay in 1549 at the age of eighteen. It was published only after his death.
This is a scream, from a young man whose eyes have opened to an ancient and horrifying evil... an evil that the rest of humanity worships. He musters his best efforts to appear careful, factual and reasonable, but his horror is hard to mask.
I have rendered it here with no apologies. La Boétie cries across the centuries. Hear him. More importantly, remember this cry: You may find it a difficult fit within the present world and your expectations of it, but if you sense any truth in this, resolve not to evict it from your mind, but rather make a place for it and let it remain, even if it must be off to the side. Posterity will thank you.
"Liberty is the only joy upon which men do not seem to insist;
for surely if they really wanted it, they would receive it.”
~ Étienne de La Boétie, "Discourse on Voluntary Servitude" (1548)
"I want to know how it is that so many men, so many villages, so many cities, so many nations, suffer under a tyrant who has no other power than the power they give him: Who is able to harm them only to the extent to which they are willing to suffer it… Who could inflict absolutely no harm upon them without them choosing to put up with it, rather than withdrawing support.
O good Lord! What strange phenomenon is this? What name shall we give it? What is the nature of this misfortune? What vice is it, or, rather, what degradation? You let yourselves be deprived before your own eyes of the best part of your revenues; your fields are plundered, your homes robbed, your family heirlooms taken away. You live in such a way that you cannot claim a single thing as your own; and it would seem that you consider yourselves lucky to be loaned your property, your families, and your very lives. All this havoc, this misfortune, this ruin, descends upon you not from alien foes, but from the one enemy whom you yourselves render as powerful as he is, for whom you go bravely to war, for whose greatness you do not refuse to offer your own bodies unto death.
He who thus domineers over you has only two eyes, only two hands, only one body, no more than is possessed by the least man among the infinite numbers dwelling in your cities; he has indeed nothing more to destroy you with, than the power that you confer upon him.
Where has he acquired enough eyes to spy upon you, if you do not provide them yourselves? How can he have so many arms to beat you with, if he does not borrow them from you? The feet that trample down your cities, where does he get them if they are not your own? How does he have any power over you except through you? How would he dare assail you if he had no cooperation from you?
From all these indignities, such as the very beasts of the field would not endure, you can save yourselves if you try, not by taking action, but merely by willing to be free. Resolve to serve no more, and you are at once freed. I do not ask that you place hands upon the tyrant to topple him over, 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 into pieces."
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by Étienne de La Boétie, here:
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