“By categorical conversion, I mean such a thing as the emergence of self-consciousness from that which is not self-conscious; such a thing as the emergence of mind from matter, of quality from quantity.
Philosophy can demonstrate the possibility of the conversion in one or other of two ways: either by means of a conceptual analysis or by pointing at a model. As it happens, philosophy is in a position to do both. Philosophy prepares itself for the accommodation of the hard facts by asserting not the crude sole reality of matter, but its primary reality. Other categories must then be shown to be able to arise from matter through process. It is at this point that philosophical materialism becomes dialectical.” (p.20-21)
“When materialism becomes dialectical, the world is not regarded as a world of states, but as a world of process; a world not of things, but of facts. The endurance of the world consists in process; and activity, or process, becomes the life blood of reality.” (p. 25)
“In the 18th and 19th centuries the social contention in philosophy became explicit, especially as law, politics, economics and ethics came to be publicly founded on philosophy. The social contention of philosophy was accepted even as late as the Russian revolution of 1917.
It is therefore not a little amazing that in the 20th century, Western philosophers should largely disinherit themselves and affect an aristocratic professional unconcern over the social realities of the day.” (p. 54)
“In the case where philosophy confirms a social milieu, it implies something of the ideology of that society. In the other case in which philosophy opposes a social milieu, it implies something of the ideology of a revolution against that social milieu. Philosophy in its social aspect can therefore be regarded as pointing up an ideology.” (p. 56)
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