'Self-Ownership' and 'Friendship': The Liberal Individualism of la Boetie, Overton, and Stirner.

Dissertation, Princeton University (1993)
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Abstract

The purpose of this dissertation is to erect a theoretical framework for liberal individualism upon the foundational notions of 'self-ownership' and 'friendship'. It proceeds by attempting sympathetically to explore the meaning of these notions in the thought of three specific thinkers--Etienne de La Boetie , Richard Overton , and Max Stirner --in their respective contexts--mid-sixteenth century France, mid-seventeenth century England, and mid-nineteenth century Prussia. It is argued that self-ownership and friendship were used consistently in reflection upon a variety of emerging, epochally modern, socio-political phenomena: including the Renaissance, urbanization, the discovery of the New World, the rise of the absolutist state, the advent of printing, the growth of popular literacy, the Reformation, the English Revolution, the establishment of democratic institutions, the growth of the market economy, the French Revolution, the industrial revolution, the 'murder of God', and the birth of ideology. It is further contended that these notions were deployed in resistance to specific contemporary arguments. Hence, the arguments of La Boetie, Overton, and Stirner are contrasted against those of Niccolo Machiavelli, Thomas Edwards, and Karl Marx , respectively. La Boetie, Overton and Stirner used 'self-ownership' to describe and defend the ethically inviolable reality of the autonomous individual person, and 'friendship' to name the ethically appropriate dynamics of individualist human relations. The conclusion culls from the separate studies of La Boetie, Overton, and Stirner, a consistent set of substantive qualities for the notions of 'self-ownership' and 'friendship'

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