b) 'In true knowledge, by contrast [to the above
quotation], the subject is not merely an absorber of information
about realities that are completely external to him: he enters into
an intimate contact with the object, and this cognition is his mode
of becoming better than he was before. For Plato and the
Platonists, therefore, the soul's urge to liberate itself from
contingency involves overcoming the alienation between the
soul and the object.'
Leszek Kolakowski, Main Currents of
Marxism, Vol I (Oxford Univ. Press, Oxford, 1978) pp16-17.