The work traces some particularly significant turning points in the life and work of Aby Warburg, with particular reference to one of the important themes that have certainly marked his articulation and development, namely the unresolved tension between the rational and the irrational, understood and experienced both within the individual existential dimension and with a wider reference to history in general. Starting from the painful experience of his long hospitalization in the Kreuzlingen clinic, these pages show the close connection, in Warburg, between life and doctrine, not without further references to themes and protagonists of the contemporary historical-cultural debate.

Keywords: History, Philosophy, Existence, Understanding, Comparison.