On Wednesday, November 19th, six students from the Duke community joined The Lemur and Professor John Martin to discuss Étienne de La Boétie, Michel de Montaigne, and the concept of Voluntary Servitude. Following a summary of La Boétie’s and Montaigne’s work on political philosophy, specifically the question of why freedom-loving people voluntarily submit to authoritarian regimes, Duke students discussed, debated, and reflected on the effects of authoritarianism in 16th-century France and the current Trump administration in the United States.
On a cold Wednesday night, six Duke students gathered for an hour and a half to discuss 16th-century French political philosophy. After brief introductions, Professor Martin, the moderator of the discussion, dived headfirst into a mini-lecture on the lives of Étienne de La Boétie and Michel de Montaigne, two 16th-century French writers, followed by a summary of their work and their friendship. Despite the occasional jovial quip, frequent political tangents, and curious analogies to doomscrolling, Twitch streamers, and TikTokers, the conversation developed into a fascinating discourse on the relationship between authority, education, and the individual.
Professor Martin framed the discussion with La Boétie’s concept of voluntary servitude. La Boétie, similar to Rousseau, found that societies tend to “de-nature” citizens, leading them to forget their natural desire for freedom. La Boétie drew heavily upon anthropology for his argument, arguing that humans naturally defend their liberty, similar to animals in the wild, and qualified his reasoning with evidence from 15th-century Venice and Florence (republics of freedom-loving people that had inexplicably descended into oligarchy and authoritarianism). La Boétie thought that voluntary servitude originated from nurture, not nature. He believed that this human tendency, under certain social conditions, led to elites and the people alike passively accepting the rise of authoritarian regimes, even when doing so resulted in a loss of their own freedoms.
Following this summary, Professor Martin posed the question, “Why do commoners and elites comply with authoritarian regimes, despite naturally having a desire to defend their freedom?”
The room quickly became engulfed in debate. Both modern and historical examples were used to grapple with the concept of resistance. The conversation shifted from the “No Kings” protests to the French Wars of Religion to the “crisis of reading” and the lack of popular academics in the modern age. The dialogue highlighted the differences between the state’s influence in society in 16th-century France and the current United States, applying La Boétie’s argument in our present-day context. Professor Martin introduced evidence of Henri II’s tax on Gascony, which resulted in a popular rebellion, demonstrating how state overreach in local affairs was historically seen as a fundamental breach of the social order, and one which people were willing to fight for.
La Boétie focused his more elite-oriented argument on the French aristocracy, observing that patronage was the primary system by which elites succumb to authoritarianism, contrary to the denaturing of the commoners through diversion, distraction, and custom–think ‘bread and circuses.’ Our debate then highlighted the question of isolation in society and its impacts on the acceptance of authority—could a lack of community cohesion or local institutions make it easier for us to submit to “voluntary servitude”? The central focus of this part of the discussion was education. We compared several examples of educational systems in France, Germany, and the United States (fortunately, we had a Francophile German exchange student in the room to cover those bases) to evaluate different ways in which the individual and the state interact.
In a time of increasing authoritarianism, Professor Martin’s seminar on La Boétie and Montaigne offered a new and more nuanced approach to discussing polarization, the acceptance of authoritarianism, and the capitulation of the American elite. Most importantly, Professor Martin helped ground our conversation in history. He left us with the profound conclusion that history helps us understand “the contingency of politics,” and he pointed out that La Boétie and Montaigne’s intense friendship was itself rooted in an obsessive study of history, both classical and modern (for them). They searched for parallels from the Roman Empire to the politics of Machiavelli’s Florentine Republic to the situation of Bordeaux in the 16th century (always recognizing the unique contexts of each situation), drawing insightful conclusions about authoritarianism throughout time that we should all think closely about today.
For many Duke students, sacrificing a beautiful Wednesday night to discuss obscure French political philosophy may seem absurd, especially when such an opportunity conflicts with an advance screening of Wicked: For Good. It took true Lemur courage to defy the gravitational pull of the green and pink. But who knows? Maybe La Boétie would’ve gone to see Wicked: For Good instead.
by Krish Ramesh
