Gustav Landauer: Die Revolution (1907). S. 84-91.

 

[La Boétie’s book offers a charming psychological theory of the courtier. He writes that one can pity the king for being surrounded by them. At the same time, one must also pity the courtiers, since they have been abandoned by God and humanity, while being forced to subject themselves to the king and his treatment. The peasants and the craftsmen are oppressed by the king telling them what to do. The courtiers, however,

“have to think what the king wants them to think, and oftenenough they must anticipate his thoughts in order to please him. It is not enough for them to obey, they have to please him. Serving him destroys them, yet they are expected to share his joy, to abandon their tastes for his, to change their nature and constitution. They have to be attentive to every single one of his words, to the tone of his voice, to his gestures and facial expressions. Their eyes, feet, and hands – everything has to be ready to read the mind of the king and to satisfy his wishes. Is this a happy life? Is this a life at all? Is there any place in the world less bearable than this? And I am not speaking of humans of a higher kind, just of those with healthy senses. Or let’s just say of anybody with a human face. What situation is more desperate than not owning a single part of yourself, but being entirely dependent on someone else: for your well-being, for your freedom, for your body, and for your life?”

According to La Boétie, the king suffers too. He can neither give nor receive love. Love and friendship only exist among good people. “Where there is cruelty, dishonesty, injustice, there cannot be friendship.” “When businessmen gather, it is not an alliance, it is a conspiracy; they do not support each other, they fear each other; they are not friends, they are accomplices.”

La Boétie asks, what can be done against the servitude that has come over humanity? What can be done against this disaster that is a disaster for everybody, for the king, for the courtiers, for the public servants, for the thinkers, and for the people? The Monarchomachs have tried to give plenty of answers, so have the scholars of constitutional law, the politicians, Bodin, Grotius, Althusius,88 Locke, Hume, and many others. And theirs are not the only answers we have to consider, as the ongoing revolution produces a growing number of theories in many countries. But let us stay with Etienne de La Boétie here: we need nothing, he says, but the desire and the will to be free. We suffer a servitude that is voluntary. It almost seems as if we humans reject the beautiful gift of freedom because it is too easy to attain: “Be determined to no longer be servants and you will be free. I do not encourage you to chase away the tyrant or to throw him off his throne. All you need to do is stop supporting him – you will see how he will consequently, like a huge colossus deprived of its base, tumble and disappear.”

Fire can be extinguished by water. But conspiracies to chase away or kill a tyrant can be enormously dangerous when conceived by men who are after fame and glory and hence prone to reproducing tyranny. Such men abuse the holy name of freedom. Modest heroes – like Harmodios, Aristogeiton, Thrasybulus, or Brutus the Elder – who liberated their fatherlands and truly gave them freedom are rare. Brutus and Cassius might have established freedom temporarily by killing Caesar (the most dangerous of all tyrants, because he was not mean and brutal, but deprived people of their rights and freedoms under a cloud of humanity and mildness), but this period died with them.]