Abstract

What position does the category of transformation hold in materialist dialectics? Arguments prevalent in the past ascribed it to the identity of contradiction, viewing it as an implication of identity. Comrades Rong Kaiming and Lai Chuanxiang published in the fourth issue of Philosophic Studies of 1983 an article entitled "Transformation Is a Relatively Independent Overall Category," which offers a different view. The article holds that the process of transformation itself is not an implication of the identity of contradiction but that the tendency and possibility of transformation has just such an implication. Furthermore, the article groups all categories of dialectics into three different levels and theorizes that the transformation, relation, and development of contradiction are an array of overall categories of materialist dialectics at the primary level; the various laws of dialectics and different pairs of categories are categories at the secondary level subordinate to the overall categories. Aside from the above, the identity and struggle of the aspects of contradiction, its universality and particularity, qualitative change and negation are all individual categories at the tertiary level. The authors' spirit of daring to make academic explorations is most valuable, and I was greatly inspired after reading it. However, I think Rong's article is not thorough enough in denying the subordination of the category of transformation to identity and in overbolstering its position when dividing the dialectical categories into three levels and taking transformation as an overall dialectical category overriding the unity of opposites. All this is open to discussion. As I see it, not only is the process of transformation itself not an implication of identity, neither does the tendency and possibility of transformation carry such an implication. And I also believe that transformation is a relatively independent category of the law of the unity of opposites rather than an overall dialectical category overriding the law. In the following I would like to offer some superficial opinions in regard to these issues in order to seek my comrades' advice