Similarities Between Basho And Hobbes

Self-Understanding can mean a plethora of many different things to many different people. However, for me Self-Understanding is the knowledge of the surroundings around you well enough to fully comprehend what you are in relation to everything else in the world. If you fully understand yourself you can begin to investigate how other things and other beings fit into your own world. Basho and Hobbes are two very intellectual thinkers/writers that come from around the same time periods. However, despite the years between these two intellectuals they share many common themes. Basho was a Japanese writer from the 17th Century focusing on himself within nature and the surrounding environments interacting. Hobbes was a thinker/writer that existed
Basho believed that we should be one with nature in order for us to come closer to nature and ourselves. He believed that we must first plunge deep into unknown in order to fully understand what has been closest to us our whole lives, ourselves. In order to get closer to ourselves we must become self-forgetting or muga. Hobbes believed that human beings are physical creatures and that our own free will is heavily changed by the environments that we are within. In order for an individual to become fully Self-Understood than that person must believe and have found the relationships between themselves and the environments and people around them. Self-Understanding is more than understanding yourself because you cannot understand yourself without also understanding the forces around you.

Matsuo Basho was in incredibly talented individual. He was a more than just a poet. Basho was also a very well-known artist within his time period. Although many of his works are still famous to this day his most famous work is the “Narrow
This time period is known as the “age of enlightenment”. This time period comes after the renaissance and the reformation where individuals were conforming to what the church and leaders had to say about a certain theme. This age focused on reason and individualism rather than tradition. However, within the “age of the enlightenment” individuals were focused more upon being individuals rather than confiding to tradition and power. This lead lots of thinkers to ask themselves who they truly are in relation to everyone around them and within themselves. Once the idea of confiding with the church and the higher governmental power was thrown out of the door individuals began to see that their own hopes, feelings, and dreams could actually become possible. Individuals began to realize that we are all physical creatures that are heavily swayed by the choices and decisions of others. Thomas Hobbes uses the quote, “The between man and man is not so considerable as that one man can thereupon as well as he. For as to the strength of body, the weakest has strength to kill the strongest”. When individuals realize who they truly are they have realized what the environment around them truly is and how it is affecting them. This is why at this time governments and government officials began to fall to the hands of the individuals. However, most individuals began to only care about themselves at this time