Leon Battista Alberti’s medicine of the mind : a glance at the Theogenius and the Intercenales

In the Profugiorum ab aerumna, Alberti revises Seneca’s idea of cura animi. As in the Theogenius, he claims that men are ill because they are anguished by physical and psychological pains. Nonetheless, here the diagnosis of human condition is less pessimistic. Alberti, in facts, moderates the stoic tones of his previous analysis. Moreover, he intertwines the references to the De tranquilliatate animi by Senca with the verses by Virgil, Horace or Propertius as well as with the quotations drawn from many other ancient sources. This way, Alberti places more emphasis on the remedies that allow men to heal. The cure prescribed by the Profugiorum ab aerumna concerns both minds and bodies, is based on prevention, and appears as a moral therapy that consists of practical precepts rather than of theoretical teachings. Alberti specifies the features of his therapy through a critical dialog with the Stoic tradition. To shed light on the differences between Seneca’s and Alberti’s medicine of the mind, I will take into account some Intercenales (in particular Patientia, Aerumna, and Naufragus), where Alberti makes use of the (medieval?) medical language to describe the human suffering and clarifies what are the best remedies to heal men. My analysis of Alberti’s Intercenales aims to define the role of philosophy as medicine of the mind and it is not intended to consider the morbus animi as a (Renaissance or pre-Ficinian) form of melancholy. As I will show, philosophia can be medicina animi, only if it is conceived in satyrical and cynical terms as a conversational practice that helps men to laugh. Moreover, Alberti never goes as far as saying that men can become healthy. If anything, he shows how men can try to accept their illness.