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Abstract
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.
Acknowledgements
This article was made possible by the support of the research project Los primeros pasos del laicismo: Spinoza y Bayle (FFI2010-15578). I am grateful to both the editor and two anonymous reviewers for their help in improving the text.
Notes
1There were many different versions of Calvinist political theory after Calvin, but I will take here these two principles as its foundational core: the doctrine of the divine right of kings and a theory of institutional resistance, grounded in the classical ideas of the Ephors. The religious wars of the seventeenth century would make Calvinists more radically anti-monarchic, but it is still possible to classify the different branches of political Calvinism regarding their views about these two principles. I have defended my case in Marta García-Alonso, La teología política de Calvino (Barcelona, 2008); Marta García-Alonso, ‘Calvin and the Ecclesiastical Power of Jurisdiction’, Reformation and Renaissance Review, 10 (2008), 137–55; Marta García-Alonso, ‘Le pouvoir disciplinaire chez Calvin’, Renaissance et Réforme/Renaissance and Reformation, 33 (2010), 29–49; Marta García-Alonso, ‘Biblical Law as the Source of Morality in Calvin’, History of Political Thought, 32 (2011), 1–19.
2My intention coincides with that of Jean Terrel, even if my reasoning is constructed in a radically different way; see Jean Terrel, ‘Républicanisme et droit naturel dans le Discours de la servitude volontaire: une rencontre aporétique’, Erytheis, 4 (2009) <http://idt.uab.es/erytheis/numero4/terrel.html> [accessed 25 Jan 2011]. Terrel's analysis is articulated based on the discussion of the aporia between natural law (the universalism of original freedom) and republicanism (the elitism of aristocratic ethics), concluding with the impossibility of a republican La Boétie in a modern (democratic) sense.
3See J. G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton, NJ, 1975), 53–54. The School of Cambridge, which counts John Pocock and Quentin Skinner among its members, holds that the need to explain texts according to the use of their doctrines (languages) in their respective contexts is a basic methodological principle.
4The opposite thesis that defends the separation between La Boétie's text and its historical context is based on Montaigne's work and his insistence on treating La Boétie's text as a humanistic work, with no contemporary political relevance. Regarding Montaigne's role in relation to the Discourse and its historical context, see Anne-Marie Cocula, ‘Réapprendre à obéir librement: le Discours de La Boétie’, Nouvelle revue du Seizième siècle, 22 (2004), 71–87.
5See Anne-Marie Cocula, ‘Le Parlament de Bordeaux au milieu du XVIe siècle’, in Étienne de la Boétie. Sage révolutionnaire et poète périgourdin, edited by Marcel Tetel (Paris, 2004), 421–36.Regarding the institution in the sixteenth century, see Jacques Ellul, Histoire des institutions: XVIe–XVIIIe siècle, (Paris, 1955–1956), IV, 29–47.
6One of the few books of History of Philosophy that includes La Boétie's thinking is the classic text by Pierre Mesnard, L'essor de la philosophie politique au XVIème siècle (Paris, 1977).
7Étienne de La Boétie, The Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude (hereafter Discourse), translated by Harry Kurz (Auburn, AL, 2008, first published in 1975), 40. I have also consulted the French edition, Étienne de La Boétie and Malcom Smith, De la Servitude volontaire (Geneva, 1987); the Spanish version, Étienne de La Boétie Discurso de la servidumbre voluntaria, translated by Pedro Lomba (Madrid, 2010); and the Spanish version of the Desgraves edition, Étienne de La Boétie and Louis Desgraves, Œuvres complètes d'Estienne de La Boétie (Bourdeaux, 1991).
8La Boétie, Discourse, 54.
9Jean Calvin, Institution de la religion chrétienne (hereafter IRC), edited by Jean-Daniel Benoît, 5 vols (Paris, 1957–1963), II, chapter 8, section 36.
10Calvin, IRC, IV, chapter 20, section 22.
11La Boétie, Discourse, 51–52.
12La Boétie, Discourse, 50.
13La Boétie, Discourse, 50. This thesis is, according to authors such as Nannerl Keohane, what converts La Boétie into a radical humanist. See Nannerl O. Keohane, ‘The Radical Humanism of Etienne De La Boetie’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 38 (1977), 119–30 (121).
14See Gérard Allard, ‘Les servitudes volontaires: leurs causes et leurs effets selon le Discours de la servitude volontaire d'Étienne de La Boétie’, Laval théologique et philosophique, 44 (1998), 131–44.
15Plato, The Banquet, translated by Percy Bysshe Shelley, ed. John Lauritsen (Boston, 2001), 184c.
16This is an idea that can be found in Polybius, for whom consent was fundamental to good governance: ‘It is by no means every monarchy which we can call straight off a kingship, but only that which is voluntarily accepted by the subjects and where they are governed rather by an appeal to their reason than by fear and force’; see Polybius, Polybius: The Histories, translated by W. R. Paton, 6 vols (Cambridge, MA, 1922–1927, revised in 1978), VI.4.2 <http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Polybius/home.html> [accessed 18 May 2011]. However, according to authors such as Brian Tierney, we should find the sources of this doctrine in Conciliarism, which questions the thesis of papal supremacy and the need for the participation of the Council (the ecclesiastical senate) in the Church's legal-theological decisions. These theses are developed in his three main works: Brian Tierney, Foundations of the Conciliar Theory (Cambridge and New York, 1955); Brian Tierney, Church Law and Constitutional Thought in the Middle Ages (London, 1979); Brian Tierney, Religion, Law and the Growth of Constitutional Thought, 1150–1650 (Cambridge, 1982). Among his predecessors in this approach, Figgis stands out because he referred to this canonistic tradition as the source of the idea of the limited monarchy; see John Neville Figgis, Studies of Political Thought from Gerson to Grotius, 1414–1625 (New York, 1907).
17La Boétie, Discourse, 77.
18La Boétie, Discourse, 59.
19La Boétie, Discourse, 68.
20La Boétie, Discourse, 46.
21La Boétie, Discourse, 72.
22La Boétie, Discourse, 73.
23Marcus Tullius Cicero, Cicero: On the Commonwealth and On the Laws (hereafter De republica), edited by James E. G. Zetzel (Cambridge, 1999), book I, section 27.
24Goyard-Fabre gives the same opinion when he says that, for La Boétie, the people are a shapeless mass with no power and no political responsibility, and with the same vices as the sovereign. See Simone Goyard-Fabre, ‘Au tournant de l'idée de démocratie: l'influence des Monarchomaques’, Cahiers de philosophie politique et juridique de l'Université de Caen, 1 (1982), 22, 29–48. For Cavaillé, however, La Boétie not only makes the people responsible for their submission, but for their liberation, which means giving them political sovereignty. See Jean-Pierre Cavaillé, ‘Langage, tyrannie et liberté dans le Discours de la servitude volontaire d'Étienne de La Boétie’, Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques, 72 (1988), 3–30.
25Toneti holds the opposite opinion. For this author, La Boétie's objective is monarchic theory in the broad sense, because what the French author criticised was, mainly, the incompatibility of the logic of power and the logic of freedom, this last being anchored in friendship (or solidarity). See Edson Donizete Toneti, ‘Discurso da servidão voluntária: relações de força e liberdade na obra de La Boétie’, Revista de Filosofía Aurora, 28 (2009), 165–91.
26Comparot acknowledged Cicero's influence on La Boétie, even though his interpretations insists on a more theoretical and humanistic influence, rather than on a philosophical political one; see Andrée Comparot, ‘La tradition de la République de Cicéron au XVI siècle et l'influence de Lactance’, Revue d'histoire littéraire de la France, 82 (1982), 371–91. Similarly, I agree with Weber when he points out that it is knowledge of freedom in Antiquity that makes it easier for him to look at the political reality that he experiences differently; see Henri Weber, ‘La Boétie et la tradition humaniste d'oppositión au tyran’, Culture et politique en France à l’époque de l'Humanisme et de la Renaissance. edited by Franco Simone (Turin, 1974), 355–74.
27Regarding Cicero: Christian Habicht, Cicero the Politician (Baltimore, MD and London, 1990); Neal Wood, Cicero's Social and Political Thought (Berkeley, CA and Oxford, 1991); Francisco Pina Polo, Marco Tulio Cicerón: biografía de una frustración, (Barcelona, 2005).
28Cicero, De republica, book II, section 69a.
29Cicero, De republica, book VI, section 13.
30The assimilation of Parliament and Senate was traditional among defenders of the French Parliament's independence such as the jurist Guillaume Budé; see The Cambridge History of Political Thought 1450–1700, edited by J. H. Burns and Mark Goldie (Cambridge, 1991), 78. See also Michael L. Monheit, ‘Guillaume Budé, Andrea Alciato, Pierre de l'Estoile: Renaissance Interpreters of Roman Law’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 58 (1997), 21–40.
31La Boétie, Discourse, 55.
32Regarding the political work quoted, see Elisabeth G. Gleason, Gasparo Contarini: Venice, Rome and Reform (Berkeley, CA and Oxford, 1993), 110–28. According to Edward Muir, the republican model, in contrast to the monarchic model, was created by its theoreticians for exportation. This is why the classic Roman model and the Renaissance Venetian one were theoretical models that could be reproduced in any time and place; see Edward Muir, ‘Was There Republicanism in the Renaissance Republics? Venice after Agnadello’, in Venice Reconsidered: The History and Civilization of an Italian City-State, 1297–1797, edited by John Martin and Dennis Romano (Baltimore, MD and London, 2000), 141.
33In the sixteenth century, the Dux was even thought of in terms close to the doctrine of divine right of emperors and monarchs. The legacy of the Dux touched by divinity is part of the iconography of the Italian Renaissance, as the portrait of the Venetian Dux Leonardo Loredan by Giovanni Bellini shows. Regarding this iconography, see Debra Pincus, ‘Hard Times and Ducal Radiance’, in Venice Reconsidered, edited by Martin and Romano, 89–136.
34See Muir, ‘Was There Republicanism in the Renaissance Republics?’, 137–67.
35In effect, the simple mention of the Italian Republic infuriated the French sovereigns: it caused Francis I to leave a parliamentary session and Henry II was scandalised about the young councillors who ‘parlent haut jusqu’à dire eripiuntur nobis fasces: sembleroit qu'on voulust faire le Senat de Venise’; Henry II, quoted in Guy Demerson, ‘Les exempla dans le Discours de la servitude volontaire’, in Étienne de la Boétie. Sage révolutionnaire, edited by Marcel Tetel (Paris, 2004), 216.
36According to Keohane, the conclusion that can be drawn from reading Servidumbre voluntaria is that he holds an anarchist ideal; see Keohane, ‘Radical Humanism of La Boetie’, 129. Along similar lines, see Nadia Gontarbert, ‘Pour une lecture politique de la Servitude volontaire’, Bulletin de la Société des amis de Montaigne, 13–14 (1983), 93–104.
37La Boétie, Discourse, 42.
38Regarding the legal form of the Discourse, read Demerson, ‘Les exempla dans le Discours’, in Étienne de la Boétie. Sage révolutionnaire, edited by Marcel Tetel (Paris, 2004), 195–224.
39Nicola Panichi makes a statement along the same lines; see Nicola Panichi, Plutarchus redivivus? La Boétie et sa réception en Europe, translated by Jean-Claude Arnould (Paris, 2008), 77.
40La Boétie, Discourse, 68–69.
41Regarding French theoreticians of the divine right of kings in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, see, in addition, the recent work by Marie-France Renoux-Zagamé, Du droit de Dieu au droit de l'homme (Paris, 2003).
42See R. W. Carlyle and A. J. Carlyle, A History of Mediaeval Political Theory in the West, 6 vols (Edinburgh and London, 1936), VI, 271–87. Figgis himself acknowledged the role of the Reformation in the recovery and updating of this doctrine; see John Neville Figgis, ‘Luther and Maquiavelli’, in Studies of Political Thought: From Gerson to Grotius, 1414–1625 (London, 1998).
43Calvin, IRC, IV, chapter 20, section 4; chapter 20, sections 6–7; chapter 20, section 9. The same expressions are used by Luther. Regarding these and other figures and their location in the Lutheran corpus, see John Witte Jr, Law and Protestantism: The Legal Teachings of the Lutheran Reformation (Cambridge, 2002), 111 and following.
44Calvin, IRC, IV, chapter 20, section 4.
45Calvin, IRC, IV, chapter 20, section 4.
46La Boétie, Discourse, 47.
47La Boétie, Discourse, 44.
48I completely agree with Constance Jordan's interpretation. She holds that La Boétie's directive was adopted by Montaigne in his actions in public life; see Constance Jordan, ‘Montaigne on Property, Public Service, and Political Servitude’, Renaissance Quarterly, 2 (2003), 408–35 (427). Hourya Bentouhami offers a very different analysis of resistance in Servitude, reading it from the tradition of civil disobedience and utopian thought; see Hourya Bentouhami, ‘Discours de la servitude volontaire de La Boétie et Désobéissance civile de Thoreau. Regards croisés’, Erytheis, 4 (2009), 86–102.
49La Boétie, Discourse, 45.
50Cocula expresses the same idea; see Cocula, ‘Réapprendre à obéir librement’, 79.
51The examples from Rome are a good illustration of La Boétie's opinion on the way that tyrants buy—rather than serving or enlightening—the people; see La Boétie, Discourse, 64–65. The elitist meaning of these ideas has been conveniently pointed out by the majority of those who study La Boétie, Keohane among others; see Keohane, ‘Radical Humanism of La Boetie’, 212.
52Cicero, De republica, book I, section 2–3.
53Cicero also presented himself as an example; see Cicero, De republica, book I, section 13.
54The job of the so-called ‘Chambre Ardente (Burning Chamber)’, created in 1547 by the Paris Parliament, was to condemn heretics to be burnt at the stake.
55The Edict of Compiègne in 1557 had approved the death sentence for anyone who professed a religion other than Catholicism, after a trial by a lay court.
56The text was discovered by Paul Bonnefon and published in 1917 and 1922, before it disappeared once more. Only Montaigne was familiar with it and he decided not to publish it because he was afraid of the (Gallican) interpretation that could be attributed to his friend, at the time of the Council of Trent. For all this data, see Malcolm Smith, ‘Introduction’, in Étienne de La Boétie and Malcolm Smith, Mémoire sur la pacification des troubles (hereafter Mémoire) (Geneva, 1983). All translations are my own.
57La Boétie, Mémoire, 36.
58Michel de l'Hôpital, quoted in François Laplanche, L’écriture, le sacré et l'histoire. Érudits et politiques protestants devant la Bible en France au XVIIe siècle (Amsterdam and Marrssen, 1986), 124.
59La Boétie, Mémoire, 56.
60La Boétie, Mémoire, 51–52.
61La Boétie, Mémoire, 54.
62La Boétie, Mémoire, 94.
63La Boétie, Mémoire, 62.
64La Boétie, Mémoire, 64 and following.
65La Boétie, Mémoire, 82.
66Regarding Gallicanism, see Antoine Dégert, ‘Gallicanism’, in The Catholic Encyclopedia, edited by Charles G. Herbermann, Edward A. Pace, Condé B. Pallen, Thomas J. Shahan and John J. Wynne (New York, 1909) <http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06351a.htm> [accessed 27 September 2010]; Bernardino Llorca, Ricardo García-Villoslada and J. M. Laboa, Historia de la iglesia católica (Madrid, 1991), IV, 202–03; Jonathan Powis, ‘Gallican Liberties and the Politics of Later Sixteenth-Century France’, The Historical Journal, 26 (1983), 515–53.
67After reading the Mémoire, it is impossible to defend, as Gadomski does, that ‘le Contr'Un fait partie de cette littérature de combat qui, sans être adéquate à la doctrine huguenote, affiche néanmoins ses sympathies envers les réformés poursuivis para la vindicte royale […]’. See Bernadette Gadomski, La Boétie, penseur masqué (Paris, 2007), 131.
68La Boétie, Discourse, 40.
69La Boétie, Discourse, 74.
70This is the conception that, according to Skinner, is at the root of the English and American revolutions and that, therefore, is the counterpoint to the liberal concept of freedom, from the Hobbesian tradition. See Quentin Skinner, Liberty before Liberalism (Cambridge, 1988). A summary of his thesis can be found in Quentin Skinner, ‘A Third Concept of Liberty’, paper presented at the Isaiah Berlin Memorial Lecture in London, November 2001.
71 Digest, I.VI.1.36.
72Skinner, Liberty before Liberalism, 46.
73It must be pointed out that La Boétie text was edited and widely polished in the period immediately after the French Revolution, in a similar way to my comments here. See François Moureau, ‘La Boétie à l’épreuve de la Révolution française. Éditions et travestissements du Contr'un’, in Étienne de la Boétie. Sage révolutionnaire, edited by Marcel Tetel (Paris, 2004), 293–306.
74Contrary to my thesis, Hourya Bentouhami claims that legal thought is absent (‘ajuridisme’) in La Boétie, making him a perfect candidate for belonging to the tradition that Pocock calls ‘civic humanism’; see Bentouhami, ‘Discours de La Boétie et Désobéissance civile de Thoreau’, 86–102 (91). In effect, according to Pocock, civic humanism does not resort to legal language to construct its political doctrines but instead appeals to an ideal of ethical and civic excellence that contrasts with specific historical situations chosen by the author. Legal language, however, resorts to natural law and refers to a human nature beyond history in order to establish the contrast with the real situation in which the author lives.
75‘As the wisdom of the commonwealth is in the aristocracy […]’. James Harrington, ‘The Commonwealth of Oceana’ and ‘A System of Politics’ (hereafter Oceana), edited by J. G. A. Pocock (Cambridge, 1992), 24.
76The Venetian example is omnipresent throughout the sixty-two pages of The Preliminaries of the work; see Harrington, Oceana, 8–68.
77For Harrington, the freedom on which everything else is based is property which, in his time, was farm property; see Harrington, Oceana, 100.
78La Boétie, Discourse, 40.
79This fact makes them constitutionalists but not republicans, as they see no problem in having a monarch at the head of the mixed government; see Harrington, Oceana, 25. However, it is not unusual to see both concepts confused; see J. C. Lyons, ‘Conceptions of the Republic in French Literature of the Sixteenth Century: Estienne de la Boetie and Francois Hotman’, Romanic Review, 21 (1930), 296–307.
80Henry Neville, Plato Redivivus, in Skinner, Liberty before Liberalism, 53.
81See Skinner, Liberty before Liberalism, 55 note 176.