There are many fascinating details about Etienne de La Boetie, but this I find especially interesting: La Boetie was born Jewish, but converted to Catholicism to help advance his political career in Bordeaux, a city that had a heavy “Marranos” influx from Spain. While this population fled to escape Spain’s forced conversions to Catholicism, many assimilated into the Bordeaux culture and called themselves “New Catholics” upon arrival. On his death bed, however, La Boetie converted back to Judaism.
Montaigne revealed this in a letter to his father. He said that after La Boetie received last rites from a priest, he “paused to recover breath a little, but noticing that the priest was about to go away, he called him back, and proceeded: ‘I desire to say, besides your hearing this: I declare that I was christened and I have lived, and that so I wish to die, in the faith in which Moses preached in Egypt.’”
One of the great unsolved mysteries of Montaigne is whether his mother Antoinette de Louppes, whose family was also from Spain, was also Jewish. Montaigne writes nothing about his mother in the essays and doesn’t say much about Judaism, but all of it is positive—highly unusual for a devout Catholic in the middle of France’s religious wars. Montaigne’s family also entered France’s nobility only a generation before, so he had to tread carefully if he wanted to preserve his social standing and political influence. There’s a robust branch of Montaigne scholarship devoted to studying and theorizing on his possible Jewish lineage and several have theorized that Etienne de La Boetie would only have made this dying declaration to Montaigne if they had discussed the matter previously and he felt some kinship over religion.
So, keep this matter in mind as we come to part two of La Boetie’s treatise on liberty. While he is writing explicitly about the power of tyrants over individuals, there’s a subtext of religious subjugation in this story as well. He begins with a passage that could easily be read both ways:
Doctors are no doubt correct in warning us not to touch incurable wounds; and I am presumably taking chances in preaching as I do to a people which has long lost all sensitivity and, no longer conscious of its infirmity, is plainly suffering from mortal illness. Let us therefore understand by logic, if we can, how it happens that this obstinate willingness to submit has become so deeply rooted in a nation that the very love of liberty now seems no longer natural.
He then goes on to posit that people are born naturally believing that they should submit to the authority of their parents. But as they age and grow educated, they slowly replace this parental authority with that of reason, and should therefore become slaves to no one. He then makes the very interesting point that if some are born with certain innate gifts—greater strength or intelligence—they exist purely to help the greater good of humanity:
One should rather conclude that in distributing larger shares to some and smaller shares to others, nature has intended to give occasion for brotherly love to become manifest, some of us having the strength to give help to others who are in need of it.
And then we come upon this passage where La Boetie goes full-on Montaigne and starts comparing humans to the animal kingdom. Think now of what Montaigne wrote in his Raymond Sebond essay and the equivalence he draws between people and other animals:
The very beasts, God help me! if men are not too deaf, cry out to them, “Long live Liberty!” Many among them die as soon as captured: just as the fish loses life as soon as he leaves the water, so do these creatures close their eyes upon the light and have no desire to survive the loss of their natural freedom. If the animals were to constitute their kingdom by rank, their nobility would be chosen from this type. Others, from the largest to the smallest, when captured put up such a strong resistance by means of claws, horns, beak, and paws, that they show clearly enough how they cling to what they are losing; afterwards in captivity they manifest by so many evident signs their awareness of their misfortune, that it is easy to see they are languishing rather than living, and continue their existence more in lamentation of their lost freedom than in enjoyment of their servitude. What else can explain the behavior of the elephant who, after defending himself to the last ounce of his strength and knowing himself on the point of being taken, dashes his jaws against the trees and breaks his tusks, thus manifesting his longing to remain free as he has been and proving his wit and ability to buy off the huntsmen in the hope that through the sacrifice of his tusks he will be permitted to offer his ivory as a ransom for his liberty?
Then La Boetie turns to the types of tyrants, those who take force by arms, inheritance or elections. Here’s what’s wrong with the democratically elected tyrant:
He who has received the state from the people, however, ought to be, it seems to me, more bearable and would be so, I think, were it not for the fact that as soon as he sees himself higher than the others, flattered by that quality which we call grandeur, he plans never to relinquish his position.
This, of course, brings to mind the rise of the Nazi Party in Germany, which immediately declared a 1000 year reich upon taking power, and what Donald Trump recently said on the campaign trail, that if you vote him into office this year, you’ll never again need to worry about voting again.
He goes on with more example of tyranny (and I need to point out, he has especially harsh words for Israelis accepting the rule of a tyrant) but then in the middle of a a long paragraph, he throws out this stunning insight that’s especially important given Montaigne’s focus on the importance of customs:
Nevertheless it is clear enough that the powerful influence of custom is in no respect more compelling than in this, namely, habituation to subjection. It is said that Mithridates trained himself to drink poison. Like him we learn to swallow, and not to find bitter, the venom of servitude. It cannot be denied that nature is influential in shaping us to her will and making us reveal our rich or meager endowment; yet it must be admitted that she has less power over us than custom, for the reason that native endowment, no matter how good, is dissipated unless encouraged, whereas environment always shapes us in its own way, whatever that may be, in spite of nature’s gifts. The good seed that nature plants in us is so slight and so slippery that it cannot withstand the least harm from wrong nourishment; it flourishes less easily, becomes spoiled, withers, and comes to nothing.
Montaigne never looks at this side of the coin, he always observes custom from the positive side of how it influences people and cultures. But La Boetie rightly observes that custom enslaves us willingly. Then after giving several historical examples of his point (including one about Venice that infuriated French authorities) La Boetie ties together his animal kingdom and custom points:
Men are like handsome race horses who first bite the bit and later like it, and rearing under the saddle a while soon learn to enjoy displaying their harness and prance proudly beneath their trappings. Similarly men will grow accustomed to the idea that they have always been in subjection, that their fathers lived in the same way; they will think they are obliged to suffer this evil, and will persuade themselves by example and imitation of others, finally investing those who order them around with proprietary rights, based on the idea that it has always been that way.
I’m no expert in how La Boetie wrote, but I know Montaigne prose when I read it … and part 2 of this essay is pure Montaigne. So much about custom, so much about animals. And if that isn’t enough, tell me this passage doesn’t read exactly like Montaigne:
But to come back to the thread of our discourse, which I have practically lost: the essential reason why men take orders willingly is that they are born serfs and are reared as such. From this cause there follows another result, namely that people easily become cowardly and submissive under tyrants.
But not everything in this essay sounds exactly like Montaigne—La Boetie wasn’t a fan of Julius Caesar. I really wish THIS guy had written 107 essays:
Nowadays I do not meet anyone who, on hearing mention of Nero, does not shudder at the very name of that hideous monster, that disgusting and vile pestilence. Yet when he died — when this incendiary, this executioner, this savage beast, died as vilely as he had lived — the noble Roman people, mindful of his games and his festivals, were saddened to the point of wearing mourning for him. Thus wrote Cornelius Tacitus, a competent and serious author, and one of the most reliable. This will not be considered peculiar in view of what this same people had previously done at the death of Julius Caesar, who had swept away their laws and their liberty, in whose character, it seems to me, there was nothing worth while, for his very liberality, which is so highly praised, was more baneful than the crudest tyrant who ever existed, because it was actually this poisonous amiability of his that sweetened servitude for the Roman people.
Towards the end, La Boetie throws in a long paragraph to note that none of his criticisms, of course, applies to France. It’s such a flowery, ridiculous tribute to a monarchy “designated by Almighty God for the government and preservation of this kingdom” that there’s no way to take it on face value. And if you did somehow take it seriously, La Boetie closes out section 2 with one last paragraph that underscores what a ridiculous but necessary detour he just took:
But to return to our subject, the thread of which I have unwittingly lost in this discussion: it has always happened that tyrants, in order to strengthen their power, have made every effort to train their people not only in obedience and servility toward themselves, but also in adoration. Therefore all that I have said up to the present concerning the means by which a more willing submission has been obtained applies to dictators in their relationship with the inferior and common classes.
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