The renown of Étienne de La Boétie, a friend of Montaigne, is attached to a written text composed "in honor of freedom, against tyrants." How can one explain that an entire people can bend under the yoke of one man without strength or prestige? To this question, the author answers that servitude is voluntary; it is the peoples who, in agreeing to submit themselves, are in contravention of what is deeper in human nature: freedom. Yet - and this is the whole scandal denounced by the author - nothing simpler than freeing themselves from the tyrant. "Be determined not to serve any more, and you are free," he says. "Determining the secret springs of domination, La Boétie builds a major work for the history of political thought.