Libertarian free will goes hand in hand with being able to choose abstract ideals over physical passions. I bring it up because it explains why Hume diverges from classical thought on the proper role of reason and passion.
I think I understand that. Hume didn't (to my mind) advocate that passions are physical, but he did claim that they are at the root of all choices and actions.
Going back to something you said previously, could you point m in the direction of where Epicurus has written similar ideas to Hume's?
Here is a similar point to Hume's, that the mind's function is not to seek abstract ideals, but to optimize for pleasure. This sounds, to me, the same as saying humans are ultimately guided by passions, not by reason.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epicurus/
"The function of the human mind — that part of the soul that is located in our chest — is not to seek higher things, but to maximize pleasure and minimize pain. That is its entire objective; the risk (a substantial one) is that it may miscalculate, since it is subject to false beliefs and errors in cognitive processes."
Thank you. It's fascinating that people used to consider the chest as a seat of higher thought. I guess even now we strongly associate it with emotions.
Based on that article I would say Hume's overall body of work is by a wide margin more contemporary than Epicurus' if not more subtle and sophisticated. The passions-slave-reason quotation is really only a tiny part of his writing. For example, Hume provides an intricate and judicious account of epistemology in which causality is reduced to a kind of anthropic pattern-recognition. This reconciles his account of psychology with the enlightenment understanding of the scientific method, which did not exist at the time of Epicurus.
