Being afraid is a great human destiny. The difficult times in which we are immersed are marked by it and this feeling risks immobilizing us, like animals in front of a danger. But perhaps it is possible to look at it with new eyes.

In these pages both educated and passionated, Adriano Prosperi accompanies us to meet the fears of humanity, tells us about the eras of pestilence and reminds us of the power of an iconography of sin and evil that informs and runs through the intellectual constructions through which we understand life.

The plague has brought to light, as in every time, popular conspiracies and strategies of the powerful, attacks on doctors and penitential processions, miraculous potions and scapegoats.

But it is necessary to look beyond. We have to recognize fear in its most hidden aspect as a form of domination, a plague of the mind for which there is only one remedy, a philosopher’s stone sought over the centuries by science as well as by art: knowledge.