Note 337 — Chapter VIII · PRAGMATISM AND ANGLO-HEGELIAN RATIONALISM

See p. 192. “But as the self is essentially a world of content engaged in certain transformations”; and p. 193, “a conscious being ... is a world ... in which the Absolute begins to reveal its proper nature.” How can a “world of content” [that is to say, the “sphere of discourse” of what some person is thinking for some purpose or other] be “engaged” in certain transformations? It is the person, or the thinker, who is transforming the various data of his experience for his purposes as a man among men. It is time that philosophy ceased to make itself ridiculous by calmly writing down such abstractions as if they were facts.