Comments on: Who Wrote the Discourse on Voluntary Servitude ?

By: Roderick

Roderick — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 06:32:42 +0000

All his “changes” are additions

Deleting the sonnets wasn’t an addition.

By: Paul Antal

Paul Antal — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 18:21:54 +0000

Why did M. leave in the stated intention?
We can’t know specifically why, but generally, M. never erases, even if it means leaving a contradiction, which he declares to be a principle of self-revelation. All his “changes” are additions.

By: Matti Linnanvuori

Matti Linnanvuori — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 08:45:44 +0000

Couldn’t de la Boétie have written his latter work as a reductio ad absurdum of religious totalitarianism?

By: A random walk to mass murder in the family | nostate.com

A random walk to mass murder in the family | nostate.com — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 11:21:16 +0000

[...] So this morning I’m reading Roderick Long talking about whether or not Étienne de la Boétie actually wrote the Discourse of Voluntary Servitude. A mention of Isabel Paterson takes me over to Wikipedia on biographical curiosity. A reference citation to her place of burial takes me over to the Find a Grave website. Putting in my own surname, what do I find? [...]

By: Black Bloke

Black Bloke — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 03:24:13 +0000

Excellent post.

The way I reconcile de la Boétie’s authorship of the works is that the later work was written to “shore up” his reputation as a decent person with the right kind of ideas, and not some sort of subversive no-goodnik. That way Discourse could reasonably be looked at as the product of a rebellious young prodigy’s exuberance, but certainly not the thoughts of a matured man.

By: Administrator

Administrator — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 23:35:45 +0000

But why then did Montaigne keep the stated intention (to place the Discourse in the Essays) in the text rather than deleting it — given that he made so many other changes throughout subsequent editions of the Essays?

Also, I don’t think your first and fourth stages count. It’s not clear that the first stage ever happened (i.e., as far as I know there’s no first edition that actually had the Discourse in it); and the fourth stage, since it reflects what Montaigne’s editors decided, isn’t relevant to assessing his own intentions.

It’s certainly true that Montaigne promises us the Discourse and then gives us the sonnets instead; and then in a later edition removes the sonnets too, while still keeping intact both the promise of the Discourse and the subsequent promise of the Sonnets. It’s an odd thing to do on any interpretation.

By: Paul Antal

Paul Antal — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 16:24:51 +0000

The evolving organization of the Essays suggests strongly that M. did not write Voluntary Servitude, and came to think of it as “marginal.” First it was to be the numerical center of Bk. I (#29 of 58), right after “Friendship”; Second, it was removed by M. and replaced with his friend’s poems; third, the notion of a “central text” around which M.’s Essays would form a sort of frame, was set aside; fourth, most modern editors act in the spirit of M. and don’t even include the poems: like M., they relegate a youthful exercise to the margins.

By: Most important is to be true.. » Montaigne, Libertarian?

Most important is to be true.. » Montaigne, Libertarian? — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 20:30:14 +0000

[...] Murray Rothbard praised Étienne de la Boétie’s Discourse of Voluntary Servitude as one of the greatest libertarian works of all time. But did La Boétie actually write it? Some recent research indicates that it Montaigne might be the real author. [...]