A philosophical problem: why servitude?
- Autores: Tatiane de Andrade
- Localización: Revista de filosofía Aurora, ISSN-e 2965-1565, ISSN 2965-1557, Vol. 37, Nº. 66, 2025
- Idioma: inglés
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Resumen
The present article aimsto discuss the conditions of possibility for the issue of human servitude to be inscribed in the history of thought as a philosophical problem. To that end, we will revisit the classic essay “The Discourse on Voluntary Servitude,”by Étiennede La Boétie, since by daring to question not only the political fact of domination but also invertingthe perspective and askingabout its reverse: if command necessarily depends on its opposite, why do we obey?, the author not only changed the coordinates on which political thought was based but also decisively implicated human will in the production and reproduction of servitude. Therefore, it is voluntary servitude as a symptom of an era—born with the constitution of the political field—that emergesin La Boétie’s discourse; hence, paradoxically, a trans-historical issue that continues to produce questions in the contemporary context.
