Hume’s Wikipedia page is really funny where it describes his life post breakdown. He certainly enjoyed the merry life and a good port. I thought it would be a funny idea to do a “day in the life” video following Hume’s lifestyle and just end up stone drunk on port.
Also, there’s a statue of Hume in the center of Edinburgh where he looks emaciated and serious like the ancient philosophers looked, and I’ve always thought it was a funny statue, because it completely gets his character (and stature I’m guessing) wrong.
This is interesting, because I was just reading an essay of Schopenhauer where he claims that his own pessimistic temperament is the best way to preserve some happiness amidst the troubles of life, because of its low expectations.
Maybe the broader lesson is that, whatever natural temperament type you have, whether cheerful, stoic, or pessimistic, that temperament is your built-in way of adapting to life, and you will be happier overall if you own and embrace it.
Philosophers have been accused of turning their own inclinations into a theory that explains why their way is the best for everyone else as well. :)
There are a few in there that seem close to what I remember. Maybe this one:
"The sublime melancholy which leads us to cherish a lively conviction of the worthlessness of everything of all pleasures and of all mankind, and therefore to long for nothing, but to feel that life is merely a burden which must be borne to an end that cannot be very distant, is a much happier state of mind than any condition of desire..."
Interesting article, and worth the read. Cheerfulness plays a large role in Nietzsche's alternatives to 19th C German pessimism. It's an uncanny, eerie cheerfulness, though. You can see the seeds of post-modernity in lines from Nietzsche like this:
"I love the magnificent exuberance of a young beast of prey that plays gracefully and, as it plays, dismembers."
It is as though Nietzsche is saying, "Hume was right about cheerfulness, but the future will be challenging. We will need a new species of cheerfulness, that may not resemble that with which we have thus far been familiar."
Also, there’s a statue of Hume in the center of Edinburgh where he looks emaciated and serious like the ancient philosophers looked, and I’ve always thought it was a funny statue, because it completely gets his character (and stature I’m guessing) wrong.