Chapter I
CONVENTIONAL ORDER. A THEORETICAL INTRODUCTION

1. Logic and ontology
   
2. Three articulations of the reductionist paradigm
   
3. The cutting of the «modern» age
   
4. Metaphors
   
5. Conventionalism and the renounce to any ontological foundation of political and juridical techniques

Chapter II
SKEPTICAL ATTITUDE AND PHILOSOPHICAL CRITIQUE
OF REASON AS PREMISES OF THE CONVENTIONAL ORDER

I. MONTAIGNE POLITIQUE (FOR A GENEALOGY OF PHILOSOPHICAL AND POLITICAL CONVENTIONALISM)
1. Phenomenology of the Self-retreat
2. Disorder
3. Splitting/Decoupling
4. Organism

II. FORMS OF THE MANNERIST MASKING: PIERRE CHARRON'S THEORY OF THE
AUTHORITY 1. A dialectic of protectio
2. Natural law and positive legal order. The foundation of values as philosophical problem
3. Private and public, or essence and appearance

Chapter III
CONVENTIONALISM AND DECISIONISM

I. JURIDICAL AND POLITICAL ASPECTS OF THE FRENCH LIBERTINISM: A CONCEPTUAL
AND HISTORICAL LINK BETWEEN DECISIONISM AND CONVENTIONALISM
1. Realism, voluntarism, critique of politics
2. Skeptical philosophy and the art of governance

II. “LES HOMMES MESURENT TOUT PAR L'EVENEMENT” (MACHON, APOLOGIE POUR
MACHIAVELLE) 1. Factualism and political occasionalism
2. Images of the order

III. UTILITARISM AND POLITICAL THEOLOGY IN THE COUNTER-REFORMATION
THOUGHT 1. A Christian version of the new-epicurean Skepticism
2. Laxism, probabilism, mannerism

Chapter IV
AN ACCOMPLISHMENT OF THE CONVENTIONAL ORDER.
HOBBES AND THE FRENCH LIBERTINISM

I. HOBBES' LIBERTINE ROOTS. A PROBLEM OF INTERPRETATION
1. Nihilist implications of nominalism
2. Some limits in Hobbes’ arbitrariness
3. The philosophical conditions of Hobbes’ political physicalism: a) nominalistic theology; b) autonomy of
‘politics’; c) French libertine ethics; d) new mechanistic science

II. NECESSARY WEAKNESS OF THE CONVENTIONAL ORDER.
THE APORETIC CONSTITUTION OF THE POLITICAL PHYSICALISM
1. Metaphorization of Copernicus
2. Political physicalism and the centrality of the meaning’s problem
3. Sorbière, Hobbes, Pascal
4. Philosophy of history and political philosophy between Libertinism and Enlightenment

Bibliography