Did Montaigne Revolutionize the Conception of Friendship? Desan versus Nehamas

Philippe Desan and Alexander Nehamas offer diametrically opposed treatments of Montaigne's account of friendship, and of his famous actual friendship with Etienne de La Boétie. For Desan, Montaigne is to be understood strictly within the context of his time, advancing a theory and practice of friendship within the patron/client system that governed social relations in 16th-century France. Nehamas argues that Montaigne marked a revolutionary break from that patronage-based conception, opening the way toward the more personal, individual, and emotional conception of friendship that typifies our era. This chapter argues that Nehamas gets the better of that debate, but then offers a new solution—differing from Nehamas's—to the mystery surrounding Montaigne's retraction of La Boétie's Voluntary Servitude as the centerpiece to be framed by his chapter “Of friendship.”