Work record
Discourse on Voluntary Servitude
c. 1548 (published 1576) · Renaissance Early Modern · Political Theory · French
Abstract
Background. A Sarlat-born law student composed this humanist exercise, circulated as Contr'un, which Huguenot pamphleteers printed after the 1572 massacres. Montaigne, his closest friend, chose not to place it in his Essays.
Argument. Any ruler, however cruel, commands only the strength that subjects lend him. Since nature made men free, their acceptance of servitude must be learned. Remove that consent, without violence, and the regime collapses.
Structure. The discourse moves from astonishment to diagnosis: the naturalness of freedom; three routes to tyranny by election, conquest and inheritance; habit; the softening of courage; amusements, honours and pious legends; and finally the network of beneficiaries surrounding the throne, closing with a reflection on friendship and divine judgment.
Key Concepts. Habit as second nature; the colossus without a pedestal; Roman circuses as decoys; a pyramid of interest running from a handful of intimates down to thousands of officials; the impossibility of true friendship between master and minion.
Edition. The library's version is an anonymous London rendering of 1735, whose preface quotes Montaigne's letters and praises Britain's balanced government of George II's reign, a framing belonging to that later moment.
Significance. Revived by later theorists of consent and nonviolent resistance, the essay remains debated as either youthful rhetoric or serious political philosophy.
Key figures
- Étienne de La Boétie: Young Périgord jurist, later counsellor in the Bordeaux Parlement
- Longa: Friend and fellow jurist to whom the essay is addressed
- Ulysses: Homeric speaker whose praise of one-man rule opens the essay
- Sperthies and Bulis: Spartan envoys who refuse the Persian Hydarnes' offer of favour
- Hippocrates: Greek physician praised for refusing service to the Persian king
- Nero: Emperor whose court illustrates the favourites' insecurity
- Michel de Montaigne: Friend whose letters the 1735 translator quotes in the preface
Summary
The Discourse on Voluntary Servitude is a short essay asking one question with unusual persistence: how can so many men, cities and nations put up with a single tyrant, who has no power except what they give him? La Boétie, writing as a young law student around 1548 (some scholars date it to about 1552-53), addresses the question to a friend named Longa and answers it in stages. He begins with Ulysses' praise of one-man rule in Homer and sets it aside, then expresses astonishment that whole peoples not only obey but serve, sacrificing goods, children and lives to one man who is often the weakest and least worthy among them. His remedy is strikingly simple: a tyrant need not be overthrown by force; if the people merely stop supporting him, he falls like a colossus whose base has been removed. The essay then asks why people do not take this step. Liberty is natural, La Boétie argues, as even animals show by resisting the cage, yet custom is stronger than nature, and those born under the yoke come to treat servitude as normal, like horses that first bite the bit and later play with it. He contrasts Venice and the Spartans Sperthies and Bulis, who told the Persian Hydarnes that he had never tasted liberty, with peoples softened by habit. Tyrants add other means: games, theatres, feasts and gifts as baits; titles and religious ceremony, illustrated by the healing toe of Pyrrhus and the miracles credited to Vespasian; and, most important, a chain of interest in which five or six favourites hold six hundred, who hold six thousand, until a great part of the country profits from the tyranny. The closing pages turn to these favourites, who are never safe, since a tyrant can neither love nor be loved; friendship, La Boétie says, exists only between good men. He ends by commending tyrants and their accomplices to the judgment of God. The essay circulated in manuscript, was printed in part in 1574 and in full in 1576 by Huguenot writers after the Saint Bartholomew's Day Massacre, and is known chiefly through Montaigne's tribute in his essay Of Friendship. The library text is the anonymous English translation printed for T. Smith in London in 1735, with the translator's preface.
Virtues in this work
- Fortitude: The Spartans Sperthies and Bulis go willingly to Persia to atone for their city and refuse Hydarnes' offer of royal favour rather than give up their liberty.
- Friendship: La Boétie teaches that friendship is a holy bond possible only among good men, which is why the tyrant and his favourites can never share it.
- Justice: The essay holds that no one is kept in servitude without injustice done him, and it ends by committing tyrants and their accomplices to the judgment of God.
Plot or Argument
- The question put to Longa
After setting aside Ulysses' line in Homer praising the rule of one, La Boétie asks how so many nations endure a single tyrant who has only the power they give him, and marvels that they serve rather than merely obey.
- The remedy: cease to support
The tyrant's eyes, hands and feet are lent to him by his subjects. Liberty requires no battle, only a resolve not to obey, after which the tyrant falls of his own weight like a colossus without a base.
- Liberty is natural
Reason, the likeness God has given all men, and the behaviour of animals that resist captivity show that freedom belongs to human nature, and that no one is held in servitude without injustice.
- Three kinds of tyrants and the power of custom
Tyrants rise by election, conquest or succession and rule much alike. People born under the yoke take it for their natural state; custom, not nature, explains why servitude is accepted, as with Mithridates learning to drink poison.
- Examples of free peoples
The Venetians, the Spartans Sperthies and Bulis before Hydarnes, and the boy Cato in Sulla's house show that those who have tasted liberty prize it above every favour.
- Baits, titles and religion
Cowardice follows servitude, as Hippocrates observed. Tyrants pacify the populace with shows, feasts and largesse, take popular titles, and borrow sacred awe through reported miracles, from Pyrrhus's toe to stories about the kings of France.
- The chain of dependents
The true support of tyranny is not the guard but the five or six favourites, their six hundred clients, and the six thousand beneath them, until nearly as many profit from tyranny as would welcome liberty.
- The favourites and friendship
Those who serve the tyrant, from Seneca and Burrus to Nero's and Commodus's intimates, live in fear and are often destroyed by him; a tyrant has no friends, because friendship lives only among good men.
- Conclusion before God
The ministers of tyranny are cursed in life and in history, and La Boétie closes by trusting that God reserves a particular judgment for tyrants and their accomplices.
Characters
- Étienne de La Boétie, author and speaker
Young jurist who poses the question of voluntary servitude and argues it through.
- Longa, addressee
Friend to whom the discourse is addressed, usually identified as Guillaume de Lur-Longa, La Boétie's predecessor in the Bordeaux Parlement.
- Sperthies and Bulis, Spartan envoys
Spartans who refuse the Persian Hydarnes' offer of royal favour because they know the taste of liberty.
- Cato of Utica, Roman example
As a boy in Sulla's house he asks his tutor for a dagger to hide under his gown and free his country from the dictator.
- Nero, tyrant
Roman emperor whose treatment of Seneca, Burrus and his own favourites shows the insecurity of a tyrant's court.
- Michel de Montaigne, friend and editor
La Boétie's friend, quoted in the 1735 translator's preface on La Boétie's character and the essay's fate.
Lessons
Power rests on cooperation
La Boétie's central claim is that a ruler's strength is borrowed from those who obey. The guards, the tax collectors and the informers are all subjects, so the people's own hands do the work of their servitude. The argument relocates the problem of tyranny from the palace to the habits of ordinary people.
- Why does La Boétie think a tyrant could be overthrown without a battle?
- Is his picture of the colossus without a base convincing, given what he later says about the chain of favourites?
- What kinds of cooperation does any government depend on?
Custom as second nature
La Boétie grants that liberty is natural but argues that custom is stronger, so that people born under the yoke stop feeling its weight. He pities rather than blames such people, and points to education and the memory of freedom as the counterweight. The essay is as much about formation as about politics.
- How do the Spartans' answer to Hydarnes and the horses that learn to play with the bit illustrate the same idea from opposite sides?
- Who, in La Boétie's account, keeps the memory of liberty alive, and how?
The economy of favour
The most original section traces tyranny's support through a pyramid of beneficiaries: six, six hundred, six thousand. Those who gain from a regime defend it, even when they also live in fear of it. La Boétie presents interest, not force, as the ruler's firmest prop.
- Why does La Boétie say the guards matter less than the five or six favourites?
- What does the comparison with pirates and their harbour towns add to the argument?
- Can his chain of dependents describe institutions other than tyrannies?
No friendship with a tyrant
La Boétie defines friendship as a sacred bond that exists only between good men and grows from mutual esteem. A tyrant, placed above everyone and trusting no one, cannot have friends, and his favourites cannot trust him. The theme links the essay to the famous friendship Montaigne later described.
- Why can there be no friendship where there is cruelty and treachery?
- How does the fate of Seneca and Burrus support La Boétie's claim?
Context
La Boétie wrote under Henry II, when the French monarchy was growing more centralized, and some readers connect the essay to the harsh royal suppression of the 1548 salt-tax revolt in Guyenne, though the text names no contemporary ruler. Its examples are drawn almost entirely from Greek and Roman history, and its tone owes much to humanist schooling in Plutarch, Xenophon and Tacitus.
Composition
Montaigne said his friend wrote it as a youth, by way of exercise, and scholars have dated it from about 1546-48 to about 1552-53. It circulated in manuscript under the alternative title Contr'un (Against One). An extract appeared in the Huguenot pamphlet Le Réveille-matin des François in 1574 and the full text in Simon Goulart's Mémoires de l'estat de France sous Charles IX in 1576. Montaigne had planned to set it at the centre of the first book of his Essays but withheld it once it had been printed by those seeking to change the state. The 1735 English translation, printed for T. Smith in London, adds a long preface by the anonymous translator that quotes Montaigne's letters and applies the essay to the British constitution of that day.
Reception
Read first as a Huguenot resistance tract and long overshadowed by Montaigne's essay on their friendship, the Discourse was revived by later writers on liberty in France, Britain and America, and in the twentieth century by theorists of nonviolent resistance and of the consent on which governments depend. Scholars still disagree about whether it is a youthful rhetorical exercise or a considered political argument.
Comparisons
- on-friendship
Montaigne's essay on his friendship with La Boétie was written to introduce the Discourse; its claim that true friendship is rare and sovereign echoes La Boétie's own closing teaching that friendship exists only among the good.
- the-prince
Written about thirty-five years apart, both analyse how a single ruler keeps power; Machiavelli advises the prince how to manage his subjects, while La Boétie asks the subjects why they keep supplying the means.
- politics
Aristotle's Book V lists the devices tyrants use to preserve themselves, including keeping subjects poor, busy and distrustful; La Boétie's baits and chain of favourites take up the same classical analysis.
- de-regno
Aquinas also asks how a people should respond to tyranny, counselling patience and public authority rather than private action; La Boétie's withdrawal of support offers a different, non-violent answer.
- no-treason
Spooner, three centuries later, also grounds political obligation in consent and argues that supporting a government one has not agreed to is a form of servitude.
- second-treatise-of-government
Locke's account of government by consent and of the people's right to resist tyranny gives a systematic shape to the intuition La Boétie states in essay form.
Quotes
“Resolve not to obey, and you are free.”
“I do not advise you to shake or overturn him, forbear only to support him, and you will see him, like a great Colossus from which the Base is taken away, fall with his own Weight, and be broken in pieces.”
“From whence has he so many Eyes to watch you, if you do not give them?”
“So the first Reason of this voluntary Servitude is Custom, like the generous Steeds who at first bite the Bitt, but afterwards play with it”
“Publick Theatres, Plays, Farces, Shews, Gladiators, Foreign Wild Beasts, Medals, Pictures, and suck like Amusements, were to the Ancients the Decoys of Servitude, the Price of their Liberty, and the Instruments of Tyranny.”
“as we say, to cleave Wood, Wedges are made of the Wood itself”
“Friendship is a sacred Word, a holy Thing; it never subsists but between good Men, nor commences but by mutual Esteem”
For Students
A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.
Reading Guide
Watch for
- The opening contrast between Ulysses' praise of one ruler in Homer and La Boétie's question about why so many serve one man.
- The string of questions about the tyrant's eyes, hands and feet, ending in the resolve not to obey and the colossus that falls of its own weight.
- The examples of free peoples: Venice, the Spartans before Hydarnes, and the boy Cato asking his tutor for a dagger in Sulla's house.
- The baits of tyranny, from Roman shows and feasts to the miracles told of Pyrrhus's toe and of Vespasian.
- The chain of six, six hundred and six thousand, and the closing discussion of friendship and the favourites' fear.
Key terms and names
- Voluntary servitude
- La Boétie's name for the condition in which people serve a ruler not because they are forced at every moment but because they keep consenting, from habit, fear or interest.
- Custom
- The force of habit that, in La Boétie's argument, is stronger than nature, so that those born under the yoke accept it as normal.
- Colossus
- A giant statue; La Boétie's image of a tyrant who collapses when the people remove the base by ceasing to support him.
- Longa
- The friend to whom the essay is addressed, usually identified as Guillaume de Lur-Longa of the Bordeaux Parlement.
- The chain of dependents
- The pyramid of favourites and officials who profit from a tyranny and so defend it: six, six hundred, six thousand, and beyond.
- Contr'un
- Against One, the alternative title under which the essay circulated in the sixteenth century.
- The 1735 translator's preface
- The anonymous English translator's introduction, which quotes Montaigne's letters about La Boétie and applies the essay to the British constitution of the 1730s; it belongs to its own time, not to La Boétie's.
Seminar Questions
- Comprehension What question does La Boétie ask Longa at the start, and why does he find the situation so strange?
- Comprehension What does La Boétie name as the first reason people serve willingly, and what second reason follows from it?
- Comprehension Describe the chain of six, six hundred and six thousand. Who belongs to each level?
- Interpretation La Boétie says the tyrant would fall if the people simply stopped supporting him, but later argues that thousands profit from his rule. Are these two claims consistent?
- Interpretation Why does La Boétie pity, rather than blame, those born under the yoke? What does this reveal about his view of education?
- Interpretation How does La Boétie treat the stories told about the kings of France, and why does he turn suddenly to praise the poetry of Ronsard?
- Big Question Is it ever true that people are responsible for the power that governs them? What would La Boétie say, and what would you say?
- Big Question La Boétie claims a tyrant can have no friends. What makes friendship possible, and what destroys it?
Faith Connections
- 1 Samuel 8:10-18 (Scripture)
Samuel warns Israel that a king will take their sons, daughters, fields and harvests, and that they will cry out because of the king they chose. La Boétie's list of what the tyrant takes, and his stress on what the people themselves supply, closely parallels this warning.
- Galatians 5:1 (Scripture)
Paul urges believers to stand fast in the liberty with which Christ has made them free and not to be entangled again with a yoke of bondage. La Boétie's image of people growing used to the yoke offers a political counterpart to Paul's spiritual warning.
- Augustine, City of God IV.4 (Church Fathers)
Augustine asks what kingdoms are without justice but great robberies, and tells of the pirate who answered Alexander. La Boétie's comparison of tyrants' courts to bands of robbers and the Cilician pirates draws on the same tradition.
- Montaigne, Essays I.28, Of Friendship (Great Conversation)
Montaigne describes his friendship with La Boétie as a union of wills he could explain only by saying, because it was he, because it was I. The essay is the indispensable companion to the Discourse's own teaching on friendship.
Logic and Rhetoric
Central argument: A tyrant has no power except what his subjects give him; his eyes, hands and wealth all come from them. Liberty is natural, so servitude must be explained by something other than nature: custom, the baits of pleasure and religion, and a chain of favourites who profit from the tyranny. Therefore the cure lies with the people, who need not fight but only cease to support the tyrant, and who must be formed by education and the memory of freedom to wish to do so.
Rhetorical device: rhetorical question (erotesis). In the address to the peoples La Boétie piles up questions such as the one asking where the tyrant gets so many eyes to watch them, if they do not give them, so that the reader supplies the conclusion before he states it.
Debate: Resolved: A people that tolerates a tyrant shares responsibility for the tyranny.
Memory Work
Resolve not to obey, and you are free.
Friendship is a sacred Word, a holy Thing; it never subsists but between good Men, nor commences but by mutual Esteem
Writing Prompts
Essay: La Boétie names custom, baits and the chain of favourites as the causes of voluntary servitude. Which does he treat as most important, and is he right to rank it so? Use at least three episodes from the Discourse.
Comparison with The Prince: Machiavelli writes to a prince about keeping power; La Boétie writes to a friend about why subjects give it. Compare what each says about how rulers use fear, favour and religion, and argue which account better explains a ruler's security.
Medical Lens
The essay is political, but it reasons repeatedly by medical analogy, as Renaissance humanists often did. La Boétie compares advising an enslaved people to a physician tampering with incurable wounds, likens the habituation to servitude to Mithridates' famed tolerance of poison, and compares the gathering of the ambitious around a tyrant to humours flowing toward a gangrenous part. He also praises Hippocrates for refusing the Persian king's rewards, an anecdote drawn from the pseudo-Hippocratic letters printed with the Hippocratic works, which the 1735 translator glosses in a note. These passages show the period's view of the physician as a moral exemplar and of the body politic as liable to disease.
- Of Voluntary Servitude, the address to the peoples (end)
La Boétie says physicians wisely leave incurable wounds alone and compares his own advice to a people long used to servitude.
- Of Voluntary Servitude, on custom
Custom teaches people to swallow servitude unawares, as Mithridates accustomed himself to poison.
- Of Voluntary Servitude, on cowardice; translator's endnotes 5 and 7
Hippocrates is cited on the cowardice of peoples under despots and praised for refusing to treat the army of Artaxerxes.
- Of Voluntary Servitude, the chain of dependents
The ambitious flock to a new tyrant as, physicians say, matter flows toward a gangrenous part of the body.
Creative Prompts
- Dialogue
Write the conversation between Sperthies, Bulis and Hydarnes as La Boétie tells it, then add a reply from Hydarnes defending the king's favour.
- Essay
La Boétie says the tyrant's guards matter less than his five or six favourites. Test the claim against one ruler from Tacitus, Suetonius or Plutarch.
- Classroom
Draw La Boétie's chain of six, six hundred and six thousand as a diagram, labelling what each level receives and what it gives.
- Fiction
Write a short scene in which Montaigne, years after his friend's death, decides not to print the Discourse in the middle of his first book of Essays.
Further Reading
- The Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude, Étienne de La Boétie, trans. Harry Kurz, introduction by Murray N. Rothbard
A twentieth-century translation, more modern in language than the 1735 version.
- Essays, Michel de Montaigne
Book I, Of Friendship, and the twenty-nine sonnets of La Boétie that follow it.
- Hiero, Xenophon
The dialogue on the miseries of tyranny that La Boétie cites.
- Lives, Plutarch
Source for Cato, Pyrrhus and many of the essay's examples.
Verification notes
All quotations were found verbatim by Grep in content/texts/discourse-on-voluntary-servitude.txt (anonymous 1735 London translation, Digital Library of Liberty and Power transcription), with the 1735 spelling and capitalization kept. Dating varies: Montaigne's statement implies about age eighteen (c. 1548); some scholars prefer 1552-53. Printing history (1574 extract in Le Réveille-matin des François; 1576 full text in Goulart's Mémoires) is standard. The identification of Longa with Guillaume de Lur-Longa is the usual one but not stated in the text. The text is continuous, so locators name the section of the argument rather than chapter numbers.
- Exact composition date (c. 1548 versus c. 1552-53).
- Identification of the addressee Longa with Guillaume de Lur-Longa.
- Link between the essay and the 1548 Guyenne salt-tax revolt, which some scholars propose and others doubt.