Foucault and La Boétie

Schachter, Marc D.

doi:10.4479/84206

Foucault and La Boétie

Schachter, Marc D.

Authors

Professor Marc Schachter marc.schachter@durham.ac.uk
Professor

Abstract

Explicit references to Étienne de La Boétie are almost entirely absent from Michel Foucault's works. This paper considers the potential reasons for the absence of the "Discours de la servitude volontaire from Foucault's meditations" on governmentality and compares certain apparent similarities in the two men's thinking on issues of power, freedom and resistance. It proposes that La Boétie's translation of Xenophon's "On Household Management" might ultimately offer a more constructive point of departure that the "Servitude volontaire" for thinking La Boétie and Foucault together while also suggesting that Foucault's possible allusion to the treatise in «Qu'est-ce que la critique? [critique et Aufklärung]» seems to entail an emancipatory project recalling La Boétie's sophisticated intellectual lessons rather than his strategically naive political claims.

Citation

Schachter, M. D. (2016). Foucault and La Boétie. Storia del pensiero politico, 5(2), 241-259. https://doi.org/10.4479/84206

Journal Article Type	Article
Acceptance Date	Jul 1, 2016
Online Publication Date	Aug 2, 2016
Publication Date	Aug 2, 2016
Deposit Date	May 28, 2015
Publicly Available Date	Mar 1, 2018
Journal	Storia del pensiero politico
Print ISSN	2279-9818
Publisher	Società Editrice il Mulino
Peer Reviewed	Peer Reviewed
Volume	5
Issue	2
Pages	241-259
DOI	https://doi.org/10.4479/84206
Publisher URL	https://www.rivisteweb.it/doi/10.4479/84206