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Introduction
The 17th-century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes developed a rather primitive materialistic worldview, but it became prevalent among the so-called advanced, atheistic figures, and therefore became widely known. According to Hobbes, the only subject of philosophy (and science in general) is the body, for there are only material and finite objects. God is unknowable, and philosophy cannot judge him, deity and soul are not objects of rational knowledge, but given in the revelation of faith and related theology. Hobbes reduced human thinking to one logic and limited it to simple mathematical operations of comparison and discrimination, addition, and subtraction. This approach is natural for a worldview that reduces all reality to one body, but Hobbess interpretation, even for him, is extremely simplified.
Main text
In the theory of knowledge, Hobbes proclaims consistent empiricism. Logic, in his opinion, operates exclusively with data obtained from experience. The movements evoke impressions in peoples sense organs, and the impressions evoke movements within people. Thoughts are these movements occurring within a person, and they, therefore, are ordinary movements of bodily substances, not containing anything ideal. Consciousness processes ideas through a physiological connection between the material traces of movements. Comparison, conjunction, and separation process simple empirical ideas into more complex ones. In his philosophical works, Hobbes compares this to how thoughts of consecutive numbers arise from combining ideas of individual units. People cannot have ideas of incorporeal objects since the senses do not perceive such objects. Comparison, connection, and separation do not change the simple ideas obtained by experience from sensations, but only consider them side by side, now, in a merger, then separately.
Will, like cognition, arises from impressions of the outside world, and in addition to logical conclusions, the latter generate feelings of pleasure and displeasure. The individual seeks how to strengthen the pleasure and to weaken displeasure. Both are only movements in a persons heart, as perception is movements in his brain. People consider things that cause pleasure as useful and evaluate opposite feelings as evil. The desire to preserve and enhance comfort goes into action, and the opposite craving leads to abstinence from activity.
The result of choosing between actions and abstinence from them is called will. The voluntary choice is outwardly free, but it is easy to make sure that it always necessarily tends toward the most definite attraction considering its underlying roots. Therefore, talking about free will is possible only with significant reservations. In ethics, Hobbes, like most materialists, proclaims the relativity of morality. Absolute goodness does not exist. What is suitable for people is evil for their enemies. The concept of good, according to Hobbess philosophy, comes down to the everyday feelings of beauty and utility, not based on anything more sublime.
The theory of the origin of the state is set forth by Hobbes in the famous work Leviathan. Like all materialists, he proceeds in it from the fact that man is naturally evil and greedy (Hobbes and Gaskin, 1996). It is impossible to look at the human personality in any other way if one denies the existence of ideal principles in the soul and explains everything in it with just material impulses. Hobbes believes that in the original, natural state (before the state), people were equal. However, under their greedy nature and the desire of everyone to rule over his neighbor from this equality, only a war of all against all could arise. It was necessary to create a state to get rid of the fear and danger associated with this universal war. For this, each individual had to give up his freedom and unlimited right to everything, transferring it to one or more persons.
According to Hobbess philosophy, to prevent the renewed war of all against all, all the rights of individuals must be transferred to the state in full. It must become unlimited, and subjects must fully obey the three types of government, which are democracy, aristocracy, and monarchy. Only the monarchy achieves the main goal for which the state happened, which is the safety of citizens. Therefore, the monarchical system is the best possible, and an individual citizen must be wholly powerless and insignificant to the state (Hobbes and Gaskin, 1996). As the source of laws, the representative of the supreme authority stands above them, for he defines fair and unjust, honest, and dishonorable. Citizens can rebel against the state only if it is unable to protect the world and only to replace loose despotism with a competent one and then again renounce all its rights in its favor. The supreme power should fully dominate not only in secular affairs but also in determining religious dogma and cult.
The fundamental idea of Kants epistemology is that all peoples knowledge is composed of two elements the content that the experience supplies, and the form that exists in mind before any experience. Human cognition begins with experience, but the experience itself is carried out only because it finds in peoples minds pre-experienced (a priori) forms and conditions for all perception given in advance. Therefore, first of all, it is necessary to study these non-empirical conditions of empirical knowledge, and Kant calls it transcendental. People know the world of things intuitively, through sensory representations, but this intuition is possible only because the material brought by sensations is inserted into a priori subjective forms of the human mind; these forms of intuition, according to Kants philosophy, are time and space. Everything that people know through sensations, they realize it in time and space, and only in this temporal-spatial shell is the physical world before people. Time and space are not ideas, not concepts, and their origin is not empirical.
According to Kant, they are pure intuitions that form the chaos of sensations and determine sensory experience; they are personal forms of the mind, but this subjectivity is universal, and therefore the knowledge arising from them is a priori and binding on everyone (Kant and Ellington, 1993). That is why pure mathematics is possible, geometry with its spatial, arithmetic, with its temporal content. The forms of space and time apply to all objects of possible experience, but only to them, only to phenomena, and things in themselves are hidden to people (Kant and Ellington, 1993). If space and time are subjective forms of the human mind, then it is clear that the knowledge they determine is also subjective-human (Kant and Ellington, 1993). However, that Kants views on the essence of things in themselves and on phenomena are not entirely sustained and are not the same in various works of him (Kant and Ellington, 1993). However, knowledge on intuition does not stop, and people get a wholly finished experience when they synthesize intuition utilizing concepts, these functions of reason.
If sensuality perceives, then idea thinks; it connects intuitions and gives unity to their diversity, and just as sensuality has its a priori forms, it also has a reason. These forms are categories that are the most general and independent of experience concepts by which all the rest, subordinates to them, theories are united in judgments. To get the judgments of reason from the decisions of intuition, one must first bring them into the appropriate categories, and this is done through the ability of the imagination, which can determine which type this or that intuitive perception fits into, since each group has its scheme, in the form link homogeneous with both the phenomenon and the category.
This scheme in Kants philosophy is considered a priori relation of time (filled time is a scheme of reality; empty time is a scheme of negation). This relation indicates which category applies to a given subject. Although the types by their origin depend on experience and even determine it, their use does not go beyond the limits of possible experience, and they are entirely inapplicable to things in themselves (Kant and Ellington, 1993). These things in themselves can only be conceivable but not known; for people, they are nouns (objects of thinking), but not phenomena (objects of perception).
Nevertheless, the human spirit strives for its cherished goal for the super-experienced and whole ideas of God, freedom, immortality. These ideas arise in peoples minds because the diversity of experience receives the highest unity and final synthesis. Ideas, bypassing the objects of intuition, apply to the judgments of the mind and give them the character of an absolute and unconditional; thus, according to Kant, peoples knowledge gradients, beginning with sensations, passing on to reason and ending in the mind. However, the unconditionality that characterizes ideas is only an idea, only a task, to the solution of which a person continually strives, wanting to find a condition for each conditional. In Kants philosophy, ideas serve as regulatory principles that govern the mind and lead it up the endless ladder of more generalizations, leading to higher purposes of the soul, world, and God.
Furthermore, if people use these ideas of the soul, peace, and God, without losing sight of the fact that people do not know the objects corresponding to them, they will serve people excellent service as reliable leaders of knowledge. If cognizable realities are seen in the purposes of these ideas, then there is a basis for the three theoretical sciences, which, according to Kant, are the stronghold of metaphysics for rational psychology, cosmology and theology. In ideas, pure reason speaks its last word and then begins the area of practical reason, the area of will.
Conclusion
Among the latter, a categorical imperative stands out for its indestructible demandingness, commanding people to act morally, no matter how these actions affect peoples well-being. Kant believes that people should be moral for the sake of morality, virtuous for virtue; performance of duty is itself the goal of good behavior (Kant and Ellington, 1993). Moreover, only a person who does good, not because of the happy inclination of his nature, but solely for duty, can be moral. True morality defeats inclinations rather than goes hand in hand with them, and the incentive of a virtuous act should not include a natural inclination toward such acts.
References
Hobbes, T., & Gaskin, J. C. A. (1996). Leviathan. Oxford University Press.
Kant, I., & Ellington, J. W. (1993). Grounding for the metaphysics of morals: With on a supposed right to lie because of philanthropic concerns (Hackett Classics) (3rd ed.). Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.
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