ABSTRACT
Starting from the course given by Foucault at the Collège de France in 1976 (‘Il faut défendre la société’) the discussion considers the division between binary or conflictualist conceptions (Machiavelli) and monist or pacifist conceptions (Hobbes) of politics. Accepting Foucault’s point of departure the essay tries to show that what is important is not so much a question of the opposition between the discourse on war on the one side and discourse on peace and order on the other, but rather different conceptions of the source of disorder and of conflict in the city and therefore of two ways of thinking political order. This leads to a reflection on the genealogy of liberalism (and the theory of the limitation of the power of the state) and the role played by Hobbes at the heart of this genealogy.
