Etienne de la Boétie (1530-1563)

Martin Jenkins looks at the life of an influential early political philosopher.

- Martin Jenkins

Etienne de la Boétie is probably best known in the English-speaking world through a footnote in his friend Michel de Montaigne’s essay ‘On Friendship’[see last issue for Montaigne’s Brief Life, Ed]. Even in France, La Boétie is a shadowy figure. No portrait of him survives, though Montaigne compares him to Socrates as a beautiful soul behind an ugly face. His life is poorly documented. Yet he is arguably the most influential French political theorist of the sixteenth century.

La Boétie was born in 1530 at Sarlat-la-Canéda in Guienne in south-west France. Orphaned at the age of ten, he was then brought up by his uncle, a priest also named Etienne. Nothing is known of his schooling. We know he studied law at the University of Orléans, which was the most prestigious law school in France. On graduating in 1553 he secured a position as a magistrate in the Parlement of Bordeaux. The Parlementswere the superior law courts of France.

Their members enjoyed all the privileges of nobility and were known as the noblesse de robe (as opposed to the noblesse d’épée, the warrior nobility). They considered themselves the repositories of the fundamental law of the realm – for instance, the Parlement of Paris claimed, and exercised, the right to ‘verify’ royal edicts, that is, to confirm their conformity with the law, and if they wished, to refuse to register them, making them ineffective. The Parlementswere the only government institutions with any independence from the throne. As a group of educated men of independent means, the Parlements represented the sole focus of political debate outside the royal court.