Refuge from Anguish

Leon Battista Alberti an author artist architect poet priest linguist philosopher and polymath wrote Profugiorum ab ærumna libri III in the first half of the 1440s. Alberti's dialogue engages with historical and philosophical influences from antiquity Christianity and the Middle Ages while emphasizing the significance of sensory perception and the sensual experience of the world. Profugiorum ab ærumna offers insight into 15th-century Florentine humanism and presents an early modern interpretation of self-cultivation and care. Alberti develops an ironic idea of therapy that challenges the Stoic belief in finding a definitive cure for the difficulties and uncertainty of cultural and social life and a resulting anguish. Instead he proposes techniques and practices including exercises in architecture and rationality to ward off anguish and listlessness while recognizing that disquiet as a sign of the Other can only ever be temporarily overcome.