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Essay on Materialism

Materialism refers to a collection of personality traits. The contemporary world is full of people who possess materialistic trait. They have a belief that owning and acquisition of the right properties is the vital ingredients of happiness. These people think that success is judged by the things individual possesses. Philosophers and theologians have been complaining for long that materialism is contrary to moral life. More often the goal of gaining material wealth is regarded as empty and in result it prevents a person from being involved in a normal life. The consequences of pursuing materialistic lifestyle are the inability to reach the state of happiness in one’s life. The empirical studies, carried out to find the correlation between happiness and materialism , have confirmed negative correlation between the two.

Being materialistic is bad, as it leads to the creation of the world of difference in the way people treat other human beings. The materialistic people hardly treat others as their equals and often go extra mile to show off their wealth . They hardly care about anyone but themselves and frequently tend to exploit and trample people through the process of a dog eat dog world. It is, therefore, important for people to follow the teachings of the Bible and become moral. The little things we possess, we need to share with the poor as this will ensure equality in the society. Materialism nurtures corruption and causes the society to be impoverished.

Materialistic people use every available means to ensure that the rest of the people in the society remain poor. The aspect of materialism is more pronounced in the third world countries, where leaders are driven by greed and in the process embezzle public funds to maintain their status.

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There’s no shame in being materialistic – it could benefit society

Lecturer in Marketing, Lancaster University

Contributors

Professor of International Management and Marketing, Vienna University of Economics and Business

Senior Lecturer, University of Manchester

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Charles Cui does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Bodo B. Schlegelmilch and Sandra Awanis do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Lancaster University provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation UK.

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Materialism gets a bad press. There is an assumption that people who prioritise “things” are inherently selfish. The stereotype is that of highly materialistic people, living in a different world, where their priority is cash, possessions and status. But is the stereotype true? Our research reveals there are two sides to this story.

Highly materialistic people believe that owning and buying things are necessary means to achieve important life goals, such as happiness, success and desirability. However, in their quest to own more, they often sideline other important goals. Research shows that highly materialistic people tend to care less about the environment and other people than “non-materialists” do. These findings lead to the assumption that highly materialistic people are largely selfish and prefer to build meaningful relationships with “stuff”, as opposed to people.

But other research shows that materialism is a natural part of being human and that people develop materialistic tendencies as an adaptive response to cope with situations that make them feel anxious and insecure, such as a difficult family relationship or even our natural fear of death .

Underlying desires

Materialism is not only found in particularly materialistic people. Even referring to people as “consumers” , as opposed to using other generic terms such as citizens, can temporarily activate a materialistic mindset. As materialism researchers James Burroughs and Aric Rindfleisch said:

Telling people to be less materialistic is like telling people that they shouldn’t enjoy sex or eat fatty foods. People can learn to control their impulses, but this does not remove the underlying desires.

As such, efforts directed towards eliminating materialism (taxing or banning advertising activities ) are unlikely to be effective. These anti-materialism views also limit business activities and places considerable tension between business and policy.

The caring materialists

Our research examined how materialism is perceived across cultures and it revealed that there is more to materialism than just self-gratification. In Asia, materialism is an important part of the “collectivistic” culture (where the emphasis is on relationships with others, in particular the groups a person belongs to).

Buying aspirational brands of goods and services is a common approach in the gift-giving traditions in East Asia. Across collectivistic communities, purchasing things that mirror the identity and style of people you regard as important can also help you to conform to social expectations that in turn blanket you with a sense of belonging. These behaviours are not unique to Asian societies. It’s just that the idea of materialism in the West is more often seen in sharp contrast to community values, rather than a part of it.

We also found that materialists in general are “meaning-seekers” rather than status seekers. They believe in the symbolic and signalling powers of products, brands and price tags. Materialists who also believe in community values use these cues to shed positive light onto themselves and others they care about, to meet social expectations, demonstrate belonging and even to fulfil their perceived social responsibilities. For example, people often flaunt their green and eco-friendly purchases of Tom’s shoes and Tesla cars in public to signal desirable qualities of altruism and social concern.

Reconciling material and collective interests

So how do we get an increasingly materialistic society to care more about the greater good (such as buying more ethically-sourced products or making more charity donations) and be less conspicuous and wasteful in its consumption? The answer is to look to our culture and what sort of collectivistic values it tries to teach us.

We found that a simple reminder of the community value that resonates with who we are as a society can help reduce materialistic tendencies. That said, the Asian and Western cultures tend to teach slightly different ideals of community value. Asian communities tend to pass on values that centre around interpersonal relationships (such as family duties). Western societies tend to pass on values that are abstract and spiritual (such as kindness, equality and social justice).

Unsurprisingly, many businesses have been quick to jump onto this bandwagon. Tear-jerking commercials from Thailand reminding people to buy insurance to protect loved ones, Christmas adverts reminding viewers to be kind to one another are just two examples. But nice commercials alone won’t be enough to do the job.

Social marketers and public policymakers should tap into society’s materialistic tendencies to promote well-meaning social programmes, such as refugee settlement, financial literacy programmes and food bank donations. The key is to promote these programmes in ways that materialists can engage with – through a public display of consumption that communicates social identity.

A perfect example is the Choose Love charity pop-up store in central London, where people get to purchase real products (blankets, children’s clothing, sleeping bags, sanitary pads) in a beautifully designed retail space akin to the Apple store, which are then distributed to refugees in Greece, Iraq and Syria.

Materialism undoubtedly has an ugly face but it is here to stay. Rather than focusing efforts to diminish it, individual consumers, businesses and policymakers should focus on using it for promoting collective interests that benefit wider society.

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Contemporary Materialism: Its Ontology and Epistemology pp 1–77 Cite as

What is Materialism? History and Concepts

• Javier Pérez-Jara 12 , 13 ,
• Gustavo E. Romero 14 , 15 &
• Lino Camprubí 16  
• First Online: 05 October 2021

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Part of the book series: Synthese Library ((SYLI,volume 447))

Despite the central presence of materialism in the history of philosophy, there is no universal consensus on the meaning of the word “matter” nor of the doctrine of philosophical materialism. Dictionaries of philosophy often identify this philosophy with its most reductionist and even eliminative versions, in line with Robert Boyle’s seventeenth century coinage of the term. But when we take the concept back in time to Greek philosophers and forward onto our own times, we recognize more inclusive forms of materialism as well as complex interplays with non-materialist thought about the place of matter in reality, including Christian philosophy and German idealism. We define philosophical materialism in its most general way both positively (the identification of reality with matter understood as changeability and plurality) and negatively (the negation of disembodied living beings and hypostatized ideas). This inclusive approach to philosophical materialism offers a new light to illuminate a critical history of the concept of matter and materialism from Ancient Greece to the present that is also attentive to scientific developments. By following the most important connections and discontinuities among theoretical frameworks on the idea of matter, we present a general thread that offers a rich and plural, but highly cohesive, field of investigation. Finally, we propose building on rich non-reductionist materialist philosophies, such as Mario Bunge’s systemic materialism and Gustavo Bueno’s discontinuous materialism, to elaborate powerful theoretical alternatives to both physicalism and spiritualism.

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Some of these philosophers, as we are going to see, used the language of traditional myth to talk about abstract philosophical conceptions; that is, they used that language as a set of rhetorical devices, along with giving traditional concepts (such as “cosmos”) a new philosophical meaning. Only a minority of them still held literal beliefs in traditional mythological elements (such as reincarnation). For that reason, although the new way of thinking that they created emerged from a specific sociocultural context (rather than appearing ex nihilo ), it had enough new and revolutionary features to be considered and classified apart.

Although Hesiod started his Theogony with an impersonal chaos (a prefiguration of later metaphysical notions), he also offered anthropomorphic explanations for the rest of natural phenomena.

According to some scholars, such as Jennifer Peck, Heraclitus’ notions of logos and God, although very similar, should not be identified, since Heraclitus’ logos is the pattern present in all things, whereas God refers to the principle of unity of opposites. It is undeniable that Heraclitus’ fragments are obscure, and often difficult to interpret; but what seems clear is that for him, the notions of God and logos , if not identical, are very similar and refer to the universal impersonal mechanism and structure of reality.

This philosopher introduced an important critique of Parmenides’ view of reality as a (Euclidean) giant sphere: since a sphere necessarily implies an outer space, reality has to be infinite .

For a full account of the atomists, with fragments, doxography and commentaries see Taylor ( 1999 ).

It is important to note that Plato talked about the Demiurge using the explicit language of myth. Since in several Dialogues Plato used other myths as allegorical teachings rather than literalist dogmas, it is also possible that his myth of the Demiurge has a non-literalist anthropomorphic reading. But while in other Platonic myths the allegorical reading is clear, in his myth of the Demiurge it is not. For that reason, it is more than likely that Plato, as Anaxagoras and Socrates before, held a real belief in some kind of personal mind that gave form to the world.

Aristotle also considered the existence of lesser “gods” who, along with the main God, move the planets, but they do so in a completely impersonal and blind way.

Although Epicurus considered Greek mythology’s gods as human fictions, he recommended his disciples to visit Greek temples and contemplate the serenity of the gods’ statues. Such activity could have psychological and ethical benefits.

The case of the relationships between Stoicism and Christianity is very interesting. Several Stoic ideas related to ethics and politics were accepted and transformed by some Christian thinkers, at the same time that they rejected Stoic metaphysics.

This is Docetism’s theological doctrine, according to which the body of Jesus was an illusion. But, despite its partial influence in other Christian communities, Docetism was soon perceived as a dangerous heresy by more powerful and popular forms of Christianity: see Wahlde ( 2015 ), Freeman ( 2011 ), and Papandrea ( 2016 ).

Through these binary oppositions between the sins generated by matter, and the virtues generated by the spirit, St. Paul did not seem no notice the theological contradiction that it was not matter, but the pure spirit of Satan who introduced evil in reality, before the creation of matter.

Even though Plato drew from the Orphic despise of matter, he did not plea for asceticism and mortification of the flesh. On the contrary, Plato encouraged good nutrition, bodily aesthetics, and sports.

Here, we use the concept of “neophobia” in Bunge’s critical sense, i.e as the metaphysical approach that denies ontological novelty in reality: “The most popular idea about novelty is that whatever appears to be new actually existed previously in a latent form: that all things and all facts are ’pregnant’ with whatever may arise from them. An early example of such neophobia is the conception of causes as containing their effects, as expressed by the scholastic formula ’There is nothing in the effect that had not been in the cause’.” (Bunge 2010 , p. 87).

According to which everything is connected with everything else through God (Bueno 1972 ).

Aquinas even defended that matter could be eternal, despite been created by God. Only by Revelation do we know that the material universe had a beginning in time: see Aquinas ( 1948 ) and Gilson ( 1960 ).

Sharing similar theological problems and concerns, these combination between negative and positive theologies also took place in medieval Judaism and Islam: see Kars ( 2019 ) and Fagenblat ( 2017 ), respectively.

The recovery of God’s anthropomorphic attributes was achieved through cataphatic theology, which sought to understand God in positive terms, emphasizing the divine attributes that we can find through the Revelation.

Hume’s (and, later, Stuart Mill’s) psychologism is different in that it can be considered an even softer version of this hypostatization of the psyche. Both authors downplay the organic and operational side of human existence, along with reducing abstract concepts, ideas and relations to psychological processes. But the independence of the mind respect of the nervous system is not held; it just suggested as a possibility.

Kant’s pure categories of the understanding are: unity, plurality, and totality for the concept of quantity; reality, negation, and limitation, for the concept of quality; inherence and subsistence, cause and effect, and community for the concept of relation; and possibility–impossibility, existence–nonexistence, and necessity and contingency, for the concept of mode (see Kant 2008 [1787]; Heidegger 1997 [1929]; and Strawson 2018 ).

It is well-known that Kant ( 2015 [1788]) introduced this God again in the Critique of Practical Reason as a postulate for moral action. But this does not contradict that, from an epistemological point of view, Kant held that the Christian God was just an idea.

Russell ( 1972 [1945]), p. 718.

Russell ( 1972 [1945]), p. 718. Russell also contended that “Modern philosophy begins with Descartes, whose fundamental certainty is the existence of himself and his thoughts, from which the external world is to be inferred. This was only the first stage in a development, through Berkeley and Kant, to Fichte, for whom everything is only an emanation of the ego. This was insanity, and, from this extreme, philosophy has been attempting, ever since, to escape into the world of every-day common sense.” Russell ( 1972 [1945]), p. XXI.

Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre was later reworked by Fichte in various versions. The most well-known version of the work was published in 1804, but other versions appeared posthumously.

That is, for Fichte, absolute reality cannot be (as Schelling will defend later) both subjective and objective.

The concept of Tathandlung reminds of Husserl’s Leistung . But Husserl’s transcendental idealism did not deny the Kantian “thing in it self” as Fichte did; it just placed it between brackets: see Pérez-Jara 2014 .

This book was published thanks to Kant’s support. As such, it was briefly mistaken by the public to be a fourth Kantian Critique. This confusion granted Fichte a considerable philosophical fame.

Important to note is that Schelling’s lectures on positive philosophy were attended by personalities such as Engels, Bakunin, Kierkegaard, and Humboldt.

The World as Will and Representation ’s first edition was published in late 1818, with the date 1819 on the title–page. In 1844, a second edition appeared. This edition was divided into two volumes: the first one was an edited version of the 1818 edition, while the second volume was a collection of commentaries about the ideas expounded in the first volume. In 1859, at the end of Schopenhauer’s life, a third expanded edition was published.

Schopenhauer’s metaphysics of sexuality brilliantly anticipates many hypotheses of evolutionary biology: see Pérez-Jara ( 2011 ).

Schopenhauer agreed with Schulze’s critique of Kant’s contradictory use of causality. For Schopenhauer, the thing in it self (i.e., the Will) is not the cause of our sensations. Rather, our sensations are a (non-causal) manifestation of the Will.

Here, we use the concept of organoleptic in its usual meaning of relative to our sensory experiences, so the “organoleptic world” is the set of phenomena, from the taste of wine to the colors of the sky, filtered through our sense organs.

For a very interesting philosophical analysis on this topic, see: Bueno ( 1972 ), pp. 50, 52, 60, 72, 283, 288.

Jarochewski ( 1975 ), p. 168.

Bunge ( 2010 ), p. 127.

Notable exceptions can be found in the work of J.C.C. Smart, Graham Nerlich, and Hugh Price who worked extensively on the ontology of spacetime and related problems.

On the other hand, Bunge ( 2010 ) opposed both approaches, because for him there cannot be states or events without entities. Romero, however, points out that materialist ontologies based on concrete things or particular events are formally equivalent (Romero 2013 , 2016 ): to consider things or events as basic is rather a matter or taste and not of fact.

Bunge ( 2010 ), p. 148.

It would also be interesting to wonder if these philosophers, in their daily lives (or even in their lectures and conferences) exclusively use complex neuroscientific terminology each time that they want to express that they feel tired, forgot something, feel disappointed, or are hungry.

Also, see in this volume his chapter and his discussion with Javier Pérez-Jara.

While Bueno himself referred to his system as “philosophical materialism” in the 1970s, as he was seeking to differentiate it from historical materialism, that conceptualization is too general and common to other philosophies; in later works, Bueno spoke of “discontinuous materialism”.

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Pérez-Jara, J., Romero, G.E., Camprubí, L. (2022). What is Materialism? History and Concepts. In: Romero, G.E., Pérez-Jara, J., Camprubí, L. (eds) Contemporary Materialism: Its Ontology and Epistemology. Synthese Library, vol 447. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89488-7_1

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87 Materialism Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

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Real Materialism and Other Essays

Galen Strawson, Real Materialism and Other Essays , Oxford UP, 2008, 478pp., $50.00 (pbk), ISBN 9780199267439.

Reviewed by Andrew Melnyk, University of Missouri

Nineteen previously published papers, with an introduction, make up Galen Strawson’s latest book; nearly all of them have been revised for republication only lightly or not at all. They address an impressively broad range of philosophical topics: the place of mind in the physical world, knowledge of the world in itself, color and color vocabulary, self-consciousness, conscious experiences, conceptions of oneself, intentionality in relation to conscious experience, freewill, causation, and Hume on causation. The papers are not all parts of a grand philosophical design, though they are thematically related to one another in various ways. The most important connecting thread is Strawson’s endorsement of what he calls realistic materialism , which, despite its name, actually denies the conventional materialism or physicalism that is widely, though by no means universally, assumed in current philosophy of mind. Perhaps half the book either defends realistic materialism or addresses issues in the philosophy of mind within the framework that it provides. The main appeal of the book, in my view, lies in the lively and undoubtedly intelligent contrarianism of its author, who provides abundant challenges to widely-held views, especially in the philosophy of mind, and in his large philosophical ambitions. He seems to me, for instance, to want to re-make contemporary philosophy of mind from scratch.

Alas, I have significant general misgivings about the book. There is needless repetition both within and across papers, even while key positions and moves are never made really clear. The book is bloated with material that should have been eliminated or ruthlessly condensed, but which was apparently included on the principle that no thought should ever go to waste. Relevant contemporary literature — I noticed this especially in the papers in the philosophy of mind — is either ignored or discussed in such general terms that it might as well have been ignored (e.g., Joe Levine’s work, the literature on representationalism, or Ruth Millikan’s work on intentionality). Rarely does the book engage in detail with the arguments of individual opponents, opponents being more likely to make an appearance, and to be dispatched, collectively. There is nothing like enough careful argumentation; indeed, Strawson’s official line is that tight arguments are over-rated (3). There is, however, a good amount of very feeble argumentation. One example: in “Real Intentionality: Why Intentionality Entails Consciousness”, Strawson objects to the view that “we need a survival-and-well-being-based normative notion of function in order to make sense of the notion of misrepresentation” as follows:

This cannot be right, for there is … no incoherence in the idea of a Pure Observer who can represent and misrepresent, and know it, in a way completely unconnected with any such notion of function. (288; emphasis in original)

As it stands, however, Strawson’s objection fails — and for a familiar reason. By saying that there is “no incoherence in the idea of a Pure Observer”, Strawson clearly means that his Pure Observer is conceivable in the sense of violating no a priori semantic constraints on the concept of representation. Those who advance the view targeted by Strawson’s objection (e.g., Millikan), however, explicitly present their view not as an analysis of the concept of representation that can be evaluated a priori by appeal to what is conceivable but instead as an a posteriori identity hypothesis as to what representation turns out to be . Indeed, they mustn’t present their view of representation as a conceptual analysis, for, given their view of what representation is, representations in general, and hence concepts, and hence the concept of representation in particular don’t have semantic analyses. The passage in which this unsuccessful objection occurs is not the only occasion on which Strawson makes what, in the current state of debate, will strike many as a very naïve use of the method of possible cases.

Despite these defects, the book still contains some very good material. I was fully persuaded, for example, by the paper arguing that Hume never held a regularity theory of causation (“David Hume: Objects and Power”), and I much enjoyed “The Impossibility of Ultimate Moral Responsibility”, as well as the acute discussion (in “Consciousness, Free Will, and the Unimportance of Determinism”) of whether it matters if determinism is true.

I was much less impressed with the work in the philosophy of mind, partly because it operates within the framework of Strawson’s realistic materialism, which I find to be an unsatisfactory basis for a philosophical research program — for reasons that I will now explain. Realistic materialism is presented in the first two papers of the book, the title essay “Real Materialism” and “Realistic Monism: Why Physicalism Entails Panpsychism”, and is a view of the place of the qualitative character of experiences in the wider world. 1 As I understand it, it comprises five claims:

1) Experiential phenomena are perfectly real.

2) Experiential phenomena are such that:

(i) they’re “part of fundamental reality” (35);

(ii) we know them to exist with certainty (23);

(iii) in having experience, “we are directly acquainted with certain features of the ultimate nature of reality” (25, 41);

(iv) “the having [of them] is the knowing” (25);

(v) “we can’t be radically in error about [their] nature” (55, note 7).

3) Not “all aspects” of experiential phenomena “can be described by current physics, or some non-revolutionary extension of it” (22).

4) Still, experiential phenomena are “physical in every respect” (23, 35, 37).

How can claim 4 and claim 3 be consistent? According to Strawson, we need (a) to distinguish between structural physical features and intrinsic physical features and (b) to adopt the epistemologically structuralist view that physics only gives us knowledge of the world’s structural features. Given (a) and (b), claim 3 is true if the qualitative character of an experience is not a structural physical feature of the world. Claim 4 can be true too, however, if, as Strawson holds:

5) The qualitative character of an experience is an intrinsic physical feature of the event of neurons firing (22, 37).

Real materialism, I should note, is not a novel position; as Strawson acknowledges, it is essentially the position proposed by Grover Maxwell in 1978 (51, note 126). Both are inspired by Russell, of course.

Claim 3 is a very strong claim, entailing the falsehood of every kind of conventional (non-eliminative) physicalism about experiential phenomena. Why should we accept claim 3, according to Strawson? Why, for example, should we disbelieve the type-identity view that phenomenal properties form a proper subset of neurophysiological properties? One might have expected Strawson to endorse familiar arguments for property dualism, e.g., Jackson’s knowledge argument or Kripke’s appeal to the necessity of identity, since, though they don’t establish that the qualitative characters of experience fail to be intrinsic physical features, they do (if successful) establish that they fail to be structural physical features. In fact, however, he doesn’t endorse these arguments, at least explicitly. 2 His official argument for claim 3 is that its negation amounts to eliminativism about experiential phenomena, which “is mad” (22). 3 That the negation of claim 3 amounts to eliminativism is said to follow “from the fact that current physics contains no predicates for experiential phenomena at all, and that no non-revolutionary extension of it could do so” (22, note 17; 56, note 9). Unfortunately, Strawson doesn’t here say how he knows this putative fact. In particular, he doesn’t say why he feels entitled to rule out the possibility that, exactly as type-identity physicalists suppose, certain immensely complex predicates from current physics in fact pick out the qualitative characters of experiential phenomena, even though this can’t be discovered a priori . 4 I conjecture, however, that one way he thinks he can rule out this possibility is by attending introspectively to his own experience (54-55, note 6). For, in his Introduction, he characterizes phenomenal properties as "properties whose whole and essential nature can be and is fully revealed in sensory experience " (12; my emphases). If this characterization of phenomenal properties is correct, then no phenomenal property can be such that some scientific term or concept picks out that very property in a way that represents more of the property’s essential nature, e.g., its internal structure, than is represented when we are directly acquainted with that property in experience. 5 But a complex predicate from current physics that picked out a phenomenal property would represent a great deal of the property’s internal structure that goes unrepresented when we are acquainted with that property in experience. So no complex predicate from current physics can pick out a phenomenal property.

Presumably, Strawson means the first premise of this argument — that phenomenal properties are “properties whose whole and essential nature can be and is fully revealed in sensory experience” — to follow somehow from claim 2. However, he gives no reason, at least that I could find, for believing claim 2. Nevertheless we do need a reason; claim 2 is not forced upon us as claim 1 is. For even if, as Strawson holds, introspection assures us that experiential phenomena exist and hence that claim 1 is true, claim 2 goes much further: it purports to describe experiential phenomena in philosophically sophisticated metaphysical and epistemological terms. Since introspection has evolved by natural selection, as Strawson would allow, it’s unlikely to be capable of informing us directly of claim 2 — or indeed of any claim of comparable philosophical theoreticity. Perhaps claim 2 can be inferred from weaker claims about experience more plausibly regarded as direct deliverances of introspection; if so, however, this will need to be shown. The same points apply, of course, if claim 2 is expanded to include the claim that phenomenal properties are “properties whose whole and essential nature can be and is fully revealed in sensory experience”.

Philosophers who accept claims 1, 2, and 3 usually go on to endorse some sort of dualism, of course, treating the qualitative character of an experience as something entirely non-physical, as something not even supervening on or realized by the physical, but not Strawson. Instead, in claim 5, he treats the qualitative character of an experience as an intrinsic physical feature of a neural event. On what grounds? One rationale for claim 5 is that, given claim 1, it follows, more or less, from claims 3 and 4 (see 71). I have already discussed support for claim 3. What about claim 4? Much empirical evidence exists for claim 4, in my view, but it’s evidence that experiential phenomena are structural physical phenomena, something that claim 3 actually contradicts. I know of no evidence that experiential phenomena are intrinsic physical phenomena (given Strawson’s assumption of epistemological structuralism about physics). So supporting claim 4 is problematic for a realistic materialist. Strawson’s endorsement of claim 4 seems in fact to rest on his attraction to a unified view of the world, the idea presumably being that, given claim 4, all features of the world are unified in being physical, whether structural-physical or intrinsic-physical (51). Nevertheless Strawson insists that we have no grasp of “the essential nature of the physical”, so he can’t substantiate the idea that the intrinsic features of the world that are the qualitative characters of experiences share a genuine physicality with the structural features of the world that physics reveals (46). This first rationale for claim 5 therefore fails.

A second rationale for claim 5 appeals to ontological economy (50, 59, 66). I think it can be reconstructed as follows:

Structural physical features exist, but structural physical features can’t exist unless intrinsic physical features do too, so intrinsic physical features exist. The qualitative characters of experiences exist also, but, according to claim 3, they aren’t structural physical features. So either they’re identical with intrinsic physical features, as claim 5 says, or they’re entirely non-physical features. The former option — claim 5 — is more economical, and hence, other things being equal, to be preferred.

Strawson doesn’t argue that other things are in fact equal. Are they? I don’t know, though the answer would turn in part on the relative abilities of realistic materialism and its best dualist rival to explain puzzling features of the mind. I also note that this rationale for claim 5 uses the recently-contested premise that structural physical features require intrinsic physical features, i.e., that the physical world couldn’t be purely structural. 6

The points made in the preceding paragraphs only partly explain why I’m not at all drawn to realistic materialism. There’s also the point that realistic materialism raises at least two inter-related questions to which, in its present form, it offers no answers. (i) According to Strawson, realistic materialism entails micropsychism , the view that “at least some ultimates are intrinsically experience-involving”, which he takes to imply that each ultimate involves a distinct subject of experience (71). Since human subjects of experience are not ultimates, and hence not the subjects of experience involved in ultimates, there must be some way in which the latter combine to form human subjects of experience. But how? Strawson raises this question himself, but he doesn’t try to answer it (72). This omission is serious, for so long as the question goes unanswered, realistic materialism hasn’t actually told us what my, or your, or any human subject’s experiencing of red is. Also, an answer to this question seems necessary for an answer to the second question. (ii) Realistic materialism, when joined with epistemological structuralism about physics, entails that we, i.e., human subjects of experience, can only know about the world’s structural features — except when we attend introspectively to the qualitative characters of our own experiences and thereby acquire knowledge of the intrinsic features of certain neural events in our own brains. But how is this supposed to work? Why does the epistemic handicap we labor under when we enquire scientifically disappear when instead we attend introspectively to our own experiences? What is it about introspection that gives it access to the intrinsic features of certain of our brain events? And why are the intrinsic features of only some, but not all, of our brain events accessible to introspection? These questions are not touched by realistic materialism in its present form.

A recurring theme in Strawson’s discussion of realistic materialism is that (i) we have no conception of what it is to be physical on the basis of which we might form any rational expectation at all that the mental couldn’t be physical and (ii) this point, though clearly appreciated in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, has been missed by contemporary students of the mind-body problem (e.g., 20, 38-40, 54). I entirely agree that we have no conception of physicality, if physicality is construed in Strawsonian fashion as a genuine property, a genuine meta-property, in fact, that is possessed by all physical properties (20). Nevertheless I strongly doubt that any student of the mind-body problem in the second half of the twentieth century has ever thought that we do have such a conception — a break with the past perhaps reflected in the terminological shift, to which Strawson attaches no importance, from “materialism” (and “matter”) to “physicalism”. Recent students formulate the mind-body problem in a way that doesn’t require a conception of physicality as a meta-property. They can do so because, unlike philosophers of earlier generations, they are able to draw upon the concrete achievements of the various branches of science over the past hundred years. Thus, pace Strawson, the mind-body problem today — our mind-body problem — is to understand how our everyday descriptions of ourselves as thinkers, feelers, and reasoners fits together with the extraordinarily rich scientific descriptions of ourselves provided by cognitive neuroscience, molecular biology, biochemistry, and, yes, even fundamental physics (54). Of course, these scientific descriptions probably don’t represent the last word, but so what? They don’t need to in order for the mind-body problem to be worth addressing. It’s interesting, at least to many of us, to contemplate our best scientific guesses as to the nature of the world and then speculate on how they hang together. Any detailed solution to the mind-body problem that we produce will naturally inherit the provisional and tentative character of the scientific descriptions with which the problem was formulated, but if scientists can tolerate fallibility, why not philosophers too?

1 And hence a view about intentional states, since Strawson holds that intentional states are experiential states.

2 He does give an argument that differs only terminologically from Joe Levine’s well known Explanatory Gap argument (63).

3 In his Introduction, Strawson compares deniers of phenomenal consciousness to psychiatric patients (6; and see note 31)!

4 On 54, note 3, he cites an argument from his own earlier work, but I won’t discuss it here.

5 Compare “element having atomic number 79” with “gold”, “NaCl” with “salt”, and so on.

6 See chs. 2 and 3 of James Ladyman and Don Ross, Every Thing Must Go: Metaphysics Naturalized (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007).

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Simple & Easy Materialism Essay Titles

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Good Essay Topics on Materialism

• Using Counterfeit Goods to Examine the Role of Ethics and Materialism
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The Great Gatsby Materialistic Character Analysis

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The Great Gatsby Materialism Essay

“Money cannot buy happiness”. This statement summarizes the passage, as Fitzgerald attacks materialistic Americans. Gatsby is the victim of materialism and cannot overcome his own isolation, even though he is extremely wealthy. Not only does Fitzgerald demonstrate that money and material goods cannot overcome Gatsby’s isolation, but he also denounces those who create this isolation because of their own materialistic desires and ideas. Overall, the audience sees that Gatsby is alone, even at death. Fitzgerald’s central mode of transportation for these ideas are a solemn to irritated tone shift, dialogue and denunciative symbolism. Fitzgerald uses the hundreds of people who go to Gatsby’s parties to symbolize materialists in his society. One …show more content…

At the beginning of the passage, the audience feels solemnity for the death of Gatsby, but as no one arrives, Fitzgerald creates tension and irritation through the dialogue of Nick and “owl-eyes”. The audience sees that Nick truly never had anyone close to him and his money was not enough to garner all the people that came to his expensive parties. Fitzgerald uses the theme to attack materialists because of how much their lives are dictated by money and how little they care for others. Another interesting aspect of this passage is the entrance and dialogue of “owl-eyes”. He barely even knew who Gatsby was, but he still appeared at the funeral. Not only does he appear but he speaks on account of Gatsby’s isolation, “The poor son-of-a-bitch”. This develops the idea that materialists are indeed ungrateful people and Gatsby is truly alone. Fitzgerald’s comparison between materialism and isolation is created through tone shift, dialogue, and symbolism. By using these, he attacks materialism and those who follow it incessantly. Furthermore, he uses Gatsby to illustrate the negative effects of extreme materialism on a human. Gatsby is ultimately left alone, even at death, and thus is the cycle of

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Examples Of Power In The Great Gatsby

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“Earth provides enough to satisfy every man 's needs, but not every man 's greed.” As humans, we work hard in order to have the greatest opportunity to succeed in life, which will fulfill our wants. F Scott Fitzgerald, author of The Great Gatsby, utilizes effective language and punctuation in the text, which helps him accomplish his purpose: Illustrate what material goods does to a society. From a rhetorical standpoint, examining logos, ethos, and pathos, this novel serves as a social commentary on how the pursuit of “The American Dream” causes the people in society to transform into greedy and heartless individuals.

Materialism In Gatsby

In the novel The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, social class is a key theme, as seen by every character having their own distinct class. Tom, Daisy, Jordan, and even Nick are old money, Gatsby is new money, and the Wilson 's are no money. In short, the more money you have, the better off you will be. In the epigraph of the novel, there is a poem by Thomas Parke D 'Invilliers, who is a fictional character created by Fitzgerald himself. This poem is about using materialism to win over the affection of someone, which is exactly what Gatsby tries to do.

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Those who solely focus on wealth may have completely empty lives. In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald highlights the fact that wealthy people have meaningless lives. He does this by using rhetoric that shows the carelessness, materialism, and ironies in their lives. In order to show this, Fitzgerald implements rhetoric and stylistic devices that show the emptiness of the characters throughout his novel that reinforces his theme that if materialism, not God, drives one, one’s dreams and hopes will eventually implode. To support his theme of emptiness, Fitzgerald facilitates ironic rhetoric to show the characters’ emptiness, weakness, and eventual destruction.

Rhetorical Strategies In The Great Gatsby

Fitzgerald utilizes many rhetorical strategies throughout his novel. Specific to the excerpt the rhetorical strategies metaphor and personification are found to be used to strengthen Fitzgerald’s key themes of dreams and reality. Ultimately though, the rhetorical strategies and themes contribute to creating the effect that Gatsby is truly above the average man and that Gatsby, at least to Nick, is some amazing creature that grew from his dreams. The first instance of personification to be used in the passage is in the line, “I felt that I wanted the world to be in uniform and at a sort of moral attention forever: I wanted no more riotous excursions with privileged glimpses into the human heart” This use of personification has the effect of

How Does Jay Fitzgerald Present Greed In The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby Greed can ruin a person’s life. F. Scott Fitzgerald shows this in his classic novel, The Great Gatsby, a sad love story about the rich title character, Jay Gatsby, and his obsession to win back the love of the now married Daisy Buchanan, his former girlfriend. The extravagant lifestyles of Gatsby and the wealthy socialites who attend his parties lead to lost dreams and wasted lives. These men and women are absorbed by material pursuits. In Jay Gatsby’s case, all the money in the world could not replace what he truly desires, Daisy.

Materialism In The Great Gatsby Analysis

The American dream states that any individual can achieve success regardless of family history, race, and/or religion simply by working hard. The 1920’s were a time of corruption and demise of moral values in society. The first World War had passed, and people were reveling in the materialism that came at the end of it, such as advanced technology and innovative inventions. The novel The Great Gatsby exploits the theme of the American Dream as it takes place in a corrupt period in history. Although the American Dream seemed more attainable than ever in the 1920’s, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s, The Great Gatsby demonstrates how materialism and the demise of moral values in society leads to the corruption and impossibility of the American Dream.

Superficiality In The Great Gatsby

Jay Gatsby, one of the main characters in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, is a wealthy man with dubious sources of money; Gatsby is renowned in New York due to the lavish parties he holds every friday in his mansion. These are spectacles that fully embody the wealth and glamour of the roaring twenties, and are narrated through the eyes of another character Nick Carraway, an ambitious 29 year old man that recently moved back to a corrupt new york in a cramped cottage next to Gatsby’s palace. After admiring the careless behaviour of the parties from a distance, Nick gets a personal invitation to Gatsby’s next party, he promptly becomes infatuated by the extravagant and frivolous lifestyle the parties portray, along with the superficial

Connotation Of Women In The Great Gatsby

Gatsby is essentially heartbroken. The house that once symbolized so much opulence is now symbolic of the wealth Gatsby cannot obtain. The matter betrays him that Daisy chose her rich expenditures over Gatsby and his desires for the same wealth. Fitzgerald exercises symbolism to show the shift in Gatsby’s feelings from love to betrayal. Subsequently, the author uses vigorous metaphors to explain his eagerness to attain

What Is The Pursuit Of Wealth In The Great Gatsby

When Gatsby loses everything, we see that wealth not only fails as a means of fulfillment but actively participates in the destruction of this goal. Fitzgerald suggests that wealth cannot lead to happiness, rather it undermines the existing and potential good in life. It should therefore should not be used as means of attaining fulfillment. The first mentions of Gatsby’s character reveal a personality who has sacrificed morality to achieve a

Examples Of Hollowness Of The Upper Class In The Great Gatsby

In the novel The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald characterizes the 1920s as an era of decayed social and moral values. One of the major themes explored in this novel is the Hollowness of the Upper Class. The entire book revolves around money including power and little love. Coincidentally the three main characters of the novel belong to the upper class and throughout the novel Fitzgerald shows how this characters have become corrupted and have lost their morality due to excess money and success and this has led them to change their perspective towards other people and they have been portrayed as short-sighted to what is important in life. First of all, we have the main character of this novel, Gatsby who won’t stop at nothing to become rich overnight in illegal dealings with mobsters such as Wolfsheim in order to conquer Daisy’s heart.”

More about The Great Gatsby Materialism Essay

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• F. Scott Fitzgerald
• Ginevra King
• United States
• This Side of Paradise
• Arnold Rothstein

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Book Guides

In The Great Gatsby , money is a huge motivator in the characters' relationships, motivations, and outcomes. Most of the characters reveal themselves to be highly materialistic, their motivations driven by their desire for money and things: Daisy marries and stays with Tom because of the lifestyle he can provide her, Myrtle has her affair with Tom due to the privileged world it grants her access to, and Gatsby even lusts after Daisy as if she is a prize to be won. After all, her voice is "full of money—that was the inexhaustible charm that rose and fell in it, the jingle of it, the cymbals' song of it. . . . High in a white palace the king's daughter, the golden girl. . . ." (7.106).

So how exactly does materialism reveal itself as a theme, how can it help us analyze the characters, and what are some common assignments surrounding this theme? We will dig into all things money here in this guide.

Money and materialism in the plot Key quotes about money/materialism Analyzing characters via money/materialism Common assignments and analysis of money/materialism in Gatsby

Quick Note on Our Citations

Our citation format in this guide is (chapter.paragraph). We're using this system since there are many editions of Gatsby , so using page numbers would only work for students with our copy of the book.

To find a quotation we cite via chapter and paragraph in your book, you can either eyeball it (Paragraph 1-50: beginning of chapter; 50-100: middle of chapter; 100-on: end of chapter), or use the search function if you're using an online or eReader version of the text.

Money and Materialism in The Great Gatsby

In the opening pages, Nick establishes himself as someone who has had many advantages in life —a wealthy family and an Ivy League education to name just two. Despite not being as wealthy as Tom and Daisy, his second cousin, they see him as enough of a peer to invite him to their home in Chapter 1 . Nick's connection to Daisy in turn makes him attractive to Gatsby. If Nick were just a middle-class everyman, the story could not play out in the same way.

Tom and Daisy 's movements are also supported by their money. At the beginning of the novel they move to fashionable East Egg, after moving around between "wherever people played polo and were rich together," and are able to very quickly pick up and leave at the end of the book after the murders, thanks to the protection their money provides (1.17). Daisy, for her part, only begins her affair with Gatsby after a very detailed display of his wealth (via the mansion tour). She even breaks down in tears after Gatsby shows off his ridiculously expensive set of colored shirts, crying that she's "never seen such beautiful shirts" before (5.118).

Gatsby 's notoriety comes from, first and foremost, his enormous wealth , wealth he has gathered to win over Daisy. Gatsby was born to poor farmer parents in North Dakota, but at 17, determined to become rich, struck out with the wealthy Dan Cody and never looked back (6.5-15). Even though he wasn't able to inherit any part of Cody's fortune, he used what he learned of wealthy society to first charm Daisy before shipping out to WWI. (In a uniform she had no idea he was poor, especially given his sophisticated manners). Then, after returning home and realizing Daisy was married and gone, he set out to earn enough money to win Daisy over, turning to crime via a partnership with Meyer Wolfshiem to quickly amass wealth (9.83-7).

Meanwhile, Tom's mistress Myrtle , a car mechanic's wife, puts on airs and tries to pass as rich through her affair with Tom, but her involvement with the Buchanans gets her killed. George Wilson , in contrast, is constrained by his lack of wealth. He tells Tom Buchanan after finding out about Myrtle's affair that he plans to move her West, but he "[needs] money pretty bad" in order to make the move (7.146). Tragically, Myrtle is hit and killed that evening by Daisy. If George Wilson had had the means, he likely would have already left New York with Myrtle in tow, saving both of their lives.

Hardly anyone shows up to Gatsby's funeral since they were only attracted by his wealth and the parties, not the man himself. This is encapsulated in a phone call Nick describes, to a man who used to come to Gatsby's parties: "one gentleman to whom I telephoned implied that he had got what he deserved. However, that was my fault, for he was one of those who used to sneer most bitterly at Gatsby on the courage of Gatsby's liquor and I should have known better than to call him" (9.69).

In short, money both drives the plot and explains many of the characters' motivations and limitations.

Key Quotes About Money

Then wear the gold hat, if that will move her; If you can bounce high, bounce for her too, Till she cry "Lover, gold-hatted, high-bouncing lover, I must have you!"

—THOMAS PARKE D'INVILLIERS

The epigraph of the novel immediately marks money and materialism as a key theme of the book—the listener is implored to "wear the gold hat" as a way to impress his lover. In other words, wealth is presented as the key to love—such an important key that the word "gold" is repeated twice. It's not enough to "bounce high" for someone, to win them over with your charm. You need wealth, the more the better, to win over the object of your desire.

"They had spent a year in France, for no particular reason, and then drifted here and there unrestfully wherever people played polo and were rich together." (1.17)

Our introduction to Tom and Daisy immediately describes them as rich, bored, and privileged. Tom's restlessness is likely one motivator for his affairs, while Daisy is weighed down by the knowledge of those affairs. This combination of restlessness and resentment puts them on the path to the tragedy at the end of the book.

"There was music from my neighbor's house through the summer nights. In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars. At high tide in the afternoon I watched his guests diving from the tower of his raft or taking the sun on the hot sand of his beach while his two motor-boats slit the waters of the Sound, drawing aquaplanes over cataracts of foam. On week-ends his Rolls-Royce became an omnibus, bearing parties to and from the city, between nine in the morning and long past midnight, while his station wagon scampered like a brisk yellow bug to meet all trains. And on Mondays eight servants including an extra gardener toiled all day with mops and scrubbing-brushes and hammers and garden-shears, repairing the ravages of the night before…." (3.1-3.6)

The description of Gatsby's parties at the beginning of Chapter 3 is long and incredibly detailed, and thus it highlights the extraordinary extent of Gatsby's wealth and materialism. In contrast to Tom and Daisy's expensive but not overly gaudy mansion , and the small dinner party Nick attends there in Chapter 1 , everything about Gatsby's new wealth is over-the-top and showy, from the crates of oranges brought in and juiced one-by-one by a butler to the full orchestra.

Everyone who comes to the parties is attracted by Gatsby's money and wealth, making the culture of money-worship a society-wide trend in the novel, not just something our main characters fall victim to. After all, "People were not invited—they went there" (3.7). No one comes due to close personal friendship with Jay. Everyone is there for the spectacle alone.

He took out a pile of shirts and began throwing them, one by one before us, shirts of sheer linen and thick silk and fine flannel which lost their folds as they fell and covered the table in many-colored disarray. While we admired he brought more and the soft rich heap mounted higher—shirts with stripes and scrolls and plaids in coral and apple-green and lavender and faint orange with monograms of Indian blue. Suddenly with a strained sound, Daisy bent her head into the shirts and began to cry stormily.

"They're such beautiful shirts," she sobbed, her voice muffled in the thick folds. "It makes me sad because I've never seen such—such beautiful shirts before." (5.117-118)

Gatsby, like a peacock showing off its many-colored tail, flaunts his wealth to Daisy by showing off his many-colored shirts. And, fascinatingly, this is the first moment of the day Daisy fully breaks down emotionally—not when she first sees Gatsby, not after their first long conversation, not even at the initial sight of the mansion—but at this extremely conspicuous display of wealth. This speaks to her materialism and how, in her world, a certain amount of wealth is a barrier to entry for a relationship (friendship or more).

"She's got an indiscreet voice," I remarked. "It's full of——"

I hesitated.

"Her voice is full of money," he said suddenly.

That was it. I'd never understood before. It was full of money—that was the inexhaustible charm that rose and fell in it, the jingle of it, the cymbals' song of it. . . . High in a white palace the king's daughter, the golden girl. . . . (7.103-106)

Daisy herself is explicitly connected with money here, which allows the reader to see Gatsby's desire for her as desire for wealth, money, and status more generally. So while Daisy is materialistic and is drawn to Gatsby again due to his newly-acquired wealth, we see Gatsby is drawn to her as well due to the money and status she represents.

I couldn't forgive him or like him but I saw that what he had done was, to him, entirely justified. It was all very careless and confused. They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made. . . . (9.146)

Here, in the aftermath of the novel's carnage, Nick observes that while Myrtle, George, and Gatsby have all died, Tom and Daisy are not punished at all for their recklessness, they can simply retreat "back into their money or their vast carelessness… and let other people clean up the mess." So money here is more than just status—it's a shield against responsibility, which allows Tom and Daisy to behave recklessly while other characters suffer and die in pursuit of their dreams.

Analyzing Characters Through Materialism

We touched on this a bit with the quotes, but all of the characters can be analyzed from the point of view of their wealth and/or how materialistic they are. This analysis can enrich an essay about old money versus new money, the American dream , or even a more straightforward character analysis , or a comparison of two different characters . Mining the text for a character's attitude toward money can be a very helpful way to understand their motivations in the world of 1920s New York.

If you analyze a character through this theme, make sure to explain:

#1 : Their attitude towards money.

#2 : How money/materialism drives their choices in the novel.

#3 : How their final outcome is shaped by their wealth status and what that says about their place in the world.

Character Analysis Example

As an example, let's look briefly at Myrtle . We get our best look at Myrtle in Chapter 2 , when Tom takes Nick to see her in Queens and they end up going to the New York City apartment Tom keeps for Myrtle and hosting a small gathering (after Tom and Myrtle hook up, with Nick in the next room!).

Myrtle is obsessed with shows of wealth , from her outfits, to insisting on a specific cab, to her apartment's decoration, complete with scenes of Versailles on the overly-large furniture: "The living room was crowded to the doors with a set of tapestried furniture entirely too large for it so that to move about was to stumble continually over scenes of ladies swinging in the gardens of Versailles" (2.51). She even adopts a different persona among her guests : "The intense vitality that had been so remarkable in the garage was converted into impressive hauteur. Her laughter, her gestures, her assertions became more violently affected moment by moment and as she expanded the room grew smaller around her until she seemed to be revolving on a noisy, creaking pivot through the smoky air" (2.56).

In Myrtle's eyes, money is an escape from life with her husband in the valley of ashes , something that brings status, and something that buys class. After all, Tom's money secures her fancy apartment and allows her to lord it over her guests and play at sophistication, even while Nick looks down his nose at her.

Obviously there is physical chemistry driving her affair with Tom, but she seems to get as much (if not more) pleasure from the materials that come with the affair—the apartment, the clothes, the dog, the parties. So she keeps up this affair, despite how morally questionable it is and the risk it opens up for her—her materialism, in other words, is her primary motivator.

However, despite her airs, she matters very little to the "old money" crowd, as cruelly evidenced first when Tom breaks her nose with a "short deft movement" (2.126), and later, when Daisy chooses to run her over rather than get into a car accident. Myrtle's character reveals how precarious social climbing is, how materialism is not actually a path to happiness/virtue.

Common Assignments and Discussion Topics About Money and Materialism in The Great Gatsby

Here are ways to think about frequently assigned topics on this the theme of money and materialism.

Discuss Tom & Daisy as people who "smash things and retreat into their money"

As discussed above, money—and specifically having inherited money—not only guarantees a certain social class, it guarantees safety and privilege : Tom and Daisy can literally live by different rules than other, less-wealthy people. While Gatsby, Myrtle, and George all end up dead, Tom and Daisy get to skip town and avoid any consequences, despite their direct involvement.

For this prompt, you can explore earlier examples of Tom's carelessness (breaking Myrtle's nose, his behavior in the hotel scene, letting Daisy and Gatsby drive back to Long Island after the fight in the hotel) as well as Daisy's (throwing a fit just before her wedding but going through with it, kissing Gatsby with her husband in the next room). Show how each instance reveals Tom or Daisy's carelessness, and how those instances thus foreshadow the bigger tragedy—Myrtle's death at Daisy's hands, followed by Tom's manipulation of George to kill Gatsby.

You can also compare Tom and Daisy's actions and outcomes to other characters to help make your point—Myrtle and Gatsby both contribute to the conflict by participating in affairs with Tom and Daisy, but obviously, Myrtle and Gatsby don't get to "retreat into their money," they both end up dead. Clearly, having old money sets you far apart from everyone else in the world of the novel.

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What do Nick's comments about money reveal about his attitude towards wealth?

This is an interesting prompt, since you have to comb through passages of Nick's narration to find his comments about money, and then consider what they could mean, given that he comes from money himself.

To get you started, here is a sample of some of Nick's comments on money and the wealthy, though there are certainly more to be found:

"Only Gatsby, the man who gives his name to this book, was exempt from my reaction—Gatsby who represented everything for which I have an unaffected scorn." (1.4)

"My own house was an eye-sore, but it was a small eye-sore, and it had been overlooked, so I had a view of the water, a partial view of my neighbor's lawn, and the consoling proximity of millionaires—all for eighty dollars a month. (1.14)

Nick's comments about money, especially in the first chapter, are mostly critical and cynical. First of all, he makes it clear that he has "an unaffected scorn" for the ultra-rich, and eyes both new money and old money critically. He sarcastically describes the "consoling proximity of millionaires" on West Egg and wryly observes Tom and Daisy's restless entitlement on East Egg.

These comments might seem a bit odd, given that Nick admits to coming from money himself: "My family have been prominent, well-to-do people in this middle-western city for three generations" (1.5). However, while Nick is wealthy, he is nowhere near as wealthy as the Buchanans or Gatsby—he expresses surprise both that Tom is able to afford bringing ponies from Lake Forest ("It was hard to realize that a man in my own generation was wealthy enough to do that" (1.16), and that Gatsby was able to buy his own mansion ("But young men didn't—at least in my provincial inexperience I believed they didn't—drift coolly out of nowhere and buy a palace on Long Island Sound" (3.88)), despite the fact they are all about 30 years old.

In other words, while he opens the book with his father's advice to remember "all the advantages [he's] had," Nick seems to have a chip on his shoulder about still not being in the highest tier of the wealthy class . While he can observe the social movements of the wealthy with razor precision, he always comes off as wry, detached, and perhaps even bitter. Perhaps this attitude was tempered at Yale, where he would have been surrounded by other ultra-wealthy peers, but in any case, Nick's cynical, sarcastic attitude seems to be a cover for jealousy and resentment for those even more wealthy than him.

Why does Gatsby say Daisy's voice is "full of money"? What does it reveal about the characters' values?

Gatsby's comment about Daisy's voice explicitly connects Daisy the character to the promise of wealth, old money, and even the American Dream . Furthermore, the rest of that quote explicitly describes Daisy as "High in a white palace, the King's daughter, the golden girl…" (7.106). This makes Daisy sound like the princess that the hero gets to marry at the end of a fairy tale—in other words, she's a high-value prize .

Daisy representing money also suggests money is as alluring and desirable—or even more so—than Daisy herself. In fact, during Chapter 8 when we finally get a fuller recap of Daisy and Gatsby's early relationship, Nick notes that "It excited [Gatsby] too that many men had already loved Daisy—it increased her value in his eyes" (8.10). In other words, Gatsby loves Daisy's "value" as an in-demand product .

But since Daisy is flighty and inconsistent, Gatsby's comment also suggests that wealth is similarly unstable. But that knowledge doesn't dampen his pursuit of wealth—if anything, it makes it even more desirable. And since Gatsby doesn't give up his dream, even into death, we can see how fervently he desires money and status.

Connecting new/old money and materialism to the American dream

In the world of The Great Gatsby , the American Dream is synonymous with money and status —not so much success, career (does anyone but Nick and George even have a real job?), happiness, or family. But even Gatsby, who makes an incredible amount of money in a short time, is not allowed access into the upper echelon of society, and loses everything in trying to climb that final, precarious rung of the ladder, as represented by Daisy.

So the American Dream, which in the first half of the book seems attainable based on Gatsby's wealth and success, reveals itself to be a hollow goal. After all, if even wealth on the scale of Gatsby's can't buy you entry into America's highest social class, what can? What's the point of striving so hard if only heartbreak and death are waiting at the end of the road?

This pessimism is also reflected in the fates of Myrtle and George, who are both trying to increase their wealth and status in America, but end up dead by the end of the novel. You can read more about the American Dream for details on The Great Gatsby 's ultimately skeptical, cynical attitude towards this classic American ideal.

Connecting money to the status of women

Daisy and Jordan are both old money socialites, while Myrtle is a working class woman married to a mechanic. You can thus compare three very different women's experiences to explore how money—or a lack thereof—seems to change the possibilities in a woman's life in early 1920s America.

Daisy maintains her "old money" status by marrying a very rich man, Tom Buchanan, and ultimately sticks with him despite her feelings for Gatsby. Daisy's decision illustrates how few choices many women had during that time—specifically, that marrying and having children was seen as the main role any woman, but especially a wealthy woman, should fulfill. And furthermore, Daisy's willingness to stay with Tom despite his affairs underscores another aspect of women's roles during the 1920s: that divorce was still very uncommon and controversial.

Jordan temporarily flouts expectations by ""[running] around the country," (1.134) playing golf, and not being in a hurry to marry—a freedom that she is allowed because of her money, not in spite of it. Furthermore, she banks on her place as a wealthy woman to avoid any major scrutiny, despite her "incurable dishonesty": "Jordan Baker instinctively avoided clever shrewd men and now I saw that this was because she felt safer on a plane where any divergence from a code would be thought impossible. She was incurably dishonest. She wasn't able to endure being at a disadvantage, and given this unwillingness I suppose she had begun dealing in subterfuges when she was very young" (3.160). Furthermore, by the end of the novel she claims to be engaged, meaning that like Daisy, she's ultimately chosen to live within the lines society has given her. (Even if she's not actually engaged, the fact she chooses to tell Nick that suggests she does see engagement as her end goal in life.)

Myrtle feels trapped in her marriage, which pushes her into her affair with Tom Buchanan, an affair which grants her access to a world—New York City, wealth, parties—she might not otherwise have access to. However, jumping up beyond her roots, using Tom's money, is ultimately unsustainable—her husband finds out and threatens to move out west, and then of course she is killed by Daisy before they can make that move. Myrtle—both working class and a woman—is thus trapped between a rock (her gender) and a hard place (her lack of money), and perhaps for this reason receives the cruelest treatment of all.

So all three women push the boundaries of their expected societal roles—Daisy's affair with Gatsby, Jordan's independent lifestyle, and Myrtle's affair with Tom—but ultimately either fall in line (Daisy, Jordan) or are killed for reaching too far (Myrtle). So Gatsby ultimately provides a pretty harsh, pessimistic view of women's roles in 1920s America.

What's Next?

In The Great Gatsby, money is central to the idea of the American Dream. Read more about how the American Dream is treated in The Great Gatsby and whether the novel is ultimately optimistic or pessimistic about the dream.

Money (or the lack of it!) is also why the novel's symbols of the green light and the valley of ashes are so memorable and charged. Read more about those symbols for a fuller understanding of how money affects The Great Gatsby.

Want the complete lowdown on Jay Gatsby's rags-to-riches story? Check out our guide to Jay Gatsby for the complete story.

Thinking about indulging in a little materialism yourself alà Gatsby? We've compiled a list of 15 must-have items for fans of The Great Gatbsy book and movie adaptations .

Looking for other literary guides? Learn more about The Crucible , The Cask of Amontillado , and " Do not go gentle into that good night " with our expert analyses.

Want to improve your SAT score by 160 points or your ACT score by 4 points? We've written a guide for each test about the top 5 strategies you must be using to have a shot at improving your score. Download it for free now:

Anna scored in the 99th percentile on her SATs in high school, and went on to major in English at Princeton and to get her doctorate in English Literature at Columbia. She is passionate about improving student access to higher education.

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