La Boétie maps how power metastasizes through favors, flattery, and fear.
Étienne de La Boétie (1530-1563) was a French magistrate, political theorist, and close friend of Michel de Montaigne. Best known for The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude, written when he was just eighteen, La Boétie posed a radical question that still echoes today: why do people submit to power that exploits them? Though he died young, his work quietly seeded the modern tradition of civil disobedience.
