Gramsci's concept of critical understanding states that all men are philosophers, and that the inherent common sense that the average individual has is not critical and coherent but disjointed and episodic. Political education can transform this common sense into critical understanding. Individuals of the subordinate class look to organic individuals within their own class for leadership in order to be able to construct oppositional conceptions of life that would become popular and hegemonic. Critical understanding is dependent on three mutually supportive conditions. One being free spaces, where workers and organic individuals come together, serving as a reference group, to create an autonomous culture which is dedicated to challenging capitalist, political, and ideological rule. The second condition is that there must be organic individuals committed to help form alternative perspectives which challenge the status quo, working to educate the subaltern class. Lastly, there must be plausibility which sustains these alternative perspectives. These organic individuals take the collective framework of the subaltern class and present it in a way that helps provide some realization of what is already understood about the world, and their economic exploitation.The concept of critical understanding is similar to the quest dimension of individual in a few distinct ways. One way is that there is a questioning quality in both in which there is a willingness to seek change. The leadership of organic individuals make it possible for members of the subaltern class to change their religious worldviews. The quest dimension is commited to "questioning existing social systems and institutions to pave the way for social change" through an open-ended dialogue. Critical understanding looks to challenge the existing social realities and the hierarchy of the dominant group in this way. Secondly, the quest dimension is commited to abstract moral...
