This article aims to bring to light the unpolitical nature of the philosophical investigation. To
pursue this goal, I will focus on the disenchantment before modern conception of philosophy
that led Karl Löwith and Leo Strauss to diagnose the crisis of modernity. In the first section, I
will present the problem of human nature and its historicity as opening the debate on the crisis
of modernity in their correspondence. In the second section, I will compare the two contrasting
models they adopt for describing the disenchantment of the philosopher before the cave of
modernity, namely Burckhardt for Löwith and Socrates for Strauss. In the third section, I will
show that Strauss's rediscovery of a Socratian political philosophy is one with the recognition of
the unpolitical origin of philosophizing. In the fourth, focusing on Löwith's interpretation of
Valéry, I will argue that Löwith defends himself from Strauss's accuse of remaining in the
perspective of historicism, by adopting a new form of conventionalism.
