Voluntary Servitude

Not a new idea

This is now the 4th week of April and hopefully each post kicking off our new series have been easy to follow. The first week, we looked at human psychology, the second week we delved into early American History with Jill Lepore, the third week, we took a look at a big arc of human history through the perspective of War, and now this week, we are going to look at political theories that hopefully tie together all of these themes.

What we’re going to do in this 4th series is not political theory in the academic sense. Hopefully, it will be something more narrative and I can finally begin to integrate of all the books we have covered to date. I tried to do that with my earlier series on liberalism which seemed to be well received.

So, this week, I will build on an earlier book that we covered, “Escape from Freedom” by Erich Fromm, in August of 2022. In a nutshell, it explored the idea that some of us choose to run away from freedom. Initially, that idea seemed unthinkable to me. Since then, I have realized the truth in this and how long this idea has been around.

In 2024, I started something that I call my “Free Education” on WordPress. I know I am a geek but it was the perfect accompaniment to all this more modern reading I was doing. Since January 2025, I have been following the Great Conversations reading list and participating in a group that meets online each month. In November, we read Michel Montaigne which has been my favorite reading so far. He was the original essayist.

I loved Montaigne because I had already read a book by Sarah Bakewell titled, “How to Live: The Life of Montaigne.” The book looks deeply into his friendship with Étienne de La Boétie. His friend died young in 1563 but in his short life, La Boétie wrote on the subject of voluntary servitude. He found it remarkable how tyrants dominate the masses. Their power would evaporate if the masses withdrew their support and stopped cooperating. Even more astounding is that often when you see tyrannical dominance, you see the masses feeling admiration and even falling in love with the tyrant.

People habituate themselves to obedience. They come to love what controls them because it provides stability, familiarity, and identity. They create rituals of loyalty, myths, and dependencies that make domination feel natural. To end oppression, one doesn’t need rebellion, one needs withdrawal of consent. Montaigne doesn’t write political theory, but his work was profoundly sympathetic to La Boétie’s psychological insight.

La Boétie says that they should not love the tyrant since he is savage and inhumane. When the few do break free and their eyes have been opened, it is by the study of history. They see with new eyes but are often alone in this revelation. He even theorized the idea of noncooperation or what we know as civil disobedience. It was a new idea, that the people would withdraw their consent rather than violently overthrow a ruler.

Montaigne didn’t deal with political issues like his friend but he did believe we deceive ourselves constantly. And modern psychology, as you know, is proving him right. His essays repeatedly show that we rationalize habits until they feel natural, we embrace conventions without examining them, we cling to custom because it feels safer than thinking. He describes how people want approval, want belonging, prefer ease to self-examination, and imitate one another’s behaviors. This is the psychological mechanism behind obedience to tyranny. Montaigne’s essays are full of doubt and he distrusts absolute claims. He dislikes dogmatism, he sees power as morally corrupting, and admires moderation and self-possession. Montaigne gives the inner portrait of a life that is exactly what La Boétie described in society. And because of that, I have loved reading his essays. His ideas feel more modern than you might expect.