Melancholy as a Dynamic of Historical Matter in David Hume

Abstract

In the context of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes and the intensification of hostility against the Huguenots in the seventeenth century, Pierre Bayle employs the notions of tolerance and intolerance to explain the difference between the effects of a literal interpretation of the Scriptures and those of the effort to understand. To explain Hume’s political history, I draw on the concept of melancholy to gauge the challenge of escaping indolence and despair without yielding to the sectarian imposition of the idea and of activity as resources for avoiding the experience of collective deadlocks. History would then undergo the reverse tension between tolerating melancholy, in order to work through its reasons, and intolerance toward melancholy, moving toward the anticipation of political effects.