Guftār dar Bandigī-yi Khud'khvāstah va dar Bāb-i Dustī: Persian 1402

How is it that men fight for their servitude as if it were their salvation? This question, which will be taken up by Spinoza and updated by totalitarian domination, is at the heart of La Boétie's Discourse on Voluntary Servitude. Far from being a pamphlet of liberal and democratic inspiration, as posterity has wrongly believed, this book remains to be discovered; Pierre Clastres and Claude Lefort strive here to rescue La Boétie from ignorance. Is he not the great antagonist equal to Machiavelli? As if their two names symbolized the paradox of politics: Machiavelli thought of power with freedom; La Boétie thought of power against freedom. Published in 1576, the Discourse on Voluntary Servitude is the work of a young eighteen-year-old author. This (so current!) text analyzes the master-slave relationships that govern the world and are based on fear, complacency, sycophancy, and self-humiliation. A political lesson but also an ethical and moral lesson, La Boétie invites us to revolt against all oppression, all exploitation, all corruption, in short against the very framework of power.