I think that this is elemental because (as frequently happens) people go through life having dogmatic beliefs and never question them or try to understand their reason for being. In short it is the whole nonmaterial development of a person in all the intellectual and spiritual (non religious sense) aspects of life. .
There are several philosophers whom I had similar views to: Jose Ortega y Gasset, Karl Marx, Abraham Maslow, and to a lesser extent Plato. What all these philosophers have in common is that they believe in an intellectual and spiritual development of the human being that is completely detached from the material aspect of life. First I will establish the views of each of the first three philosophers mentioned and compare them. In particular with Marx and Maslow stressing the importance of economic security allowing for the fullest development of the individual. Then I will elevate the views of Karl Marx's "complete individual" to the level of a socialist society and compare it to the society ruled by "philosopher kings" idealized by Plato, comparing them and establishing which of the two is the better. .
Spanish thinker, Jose Ortega y Gasset wrote The Rebellion of the Masses during the period after the First World War. In it he criticizes the demoralization of Europe and its lack of world leadership caused by a rebellion of the masses. By masses he means, in a quantitative sense, the hordes of people; but this term also has a qualitative sense, which is that of being mass or what he also calls the "half man". In his own words it is, "The common quality, the dense or ignorant society, it is the man in as much as he does not differentiate himself from other men, but rather repeats himself in a generic sense." This man is a person without personal values and he says to be just like every one else. He is a person who does not demand more of himself and is content being this way.
(Rose Gallo 39). ... Bruccoli pointed out that "in Gatsby's name the pun on gat, the slang term for pistol is obvious- (208) and the "old sport- saying Gatsby uses was taken from an acquaintance of Fitzgerald, Max Geralch, an alleged bootlegger, who shot himself in 1939 (210). ...
