In the 1920s and 1930s, Carl Schmitt and Leo Strauss proposed two distinct and in a way complementary lectures on the Thomas Hobbes’ political and philosophical legacy, mainly on his modern foundation of natural right and eventually on the decadency of the state thanks to the phenomena of neutralization and depoliticization. Taking into consideration the restatement of their criticism on liberalism, our aim here is to point out the genesis of a conservative thought out of the intellectual background established by (...) those authors. (shrink)