Keywords: Jean Bodin; Political Decline; Methodus; Six Livres de la République.
In 2013 the publication of the critical edition of two of the most important works on the historical/political/ juridical debate regarding the modern age - Jean Bodin's "Methodus ad facilem historiarum cognitionem" and "Le six livres de la République" - reproposes a non-original version of the historiographical debate on the relationship between these two works: this discussion is not merely academic, since political philosophy is a crucial interest of our culture. Together with the problem of "sovereignty" - so topical in an era in which the centers of power have multiplied - Bodin's works point out the question of the decline and of the decay of political institutions: a question that accompanied the European philosophical/political way of thinking from Plato's "Repubblica" onwards and which Bodin, in his works, develops in terms on which it is still worth the while to reflect.