The Sociology of Philosophies

cal and religious practices (see Figure 4.1). The Mohists emerged two genera- tions later with doctrines explicitly contradictin ...

FIGURE 4.1. EMERGENCE OF CHINESE NETWORK, 500–365 B.C.E.: RIVAL CONFUCIAN LINEAGES, MOHISTS, PRIMITIVISTS Innovation by Oppositi ...

strangeness of the period with a backward-looking doctrine of religious cor- rectness. Confucius was harshly critical of dukes a ...

nection with the new religious conception of T’ien-ming, or Destiny. As the determinism which goes along with a formalistic ritu ...

plots and negotiations that linked them into a network of conflict was giving rise to an inner structure, which became the incip ...

distinctions, was given important political responsibilities. Other famous per- sons were known for their ability to argue convi ...

FIGURE 4.2. INTERSECTING CENTERS OF THE WARRING STATES, 365–200 B.C.E. 144 •^ Intellectual Communities: Asian Paths ...

for the state of Ch’u. Ch’u was the large southern state, then on the frontiers of Chinese settlement, where Mohist logicians ha ...

from the generation of the Sophists on. In both places cosmopolitan and competitive networks broke through into abstract self-re ...

connections which we find in the tradition of Chuang Tzu and incipient Taoism; nor do we find Chinese debates over hedonistic su ...

sive, went on largely as a matter of practical conformity; occasionally philoso- phers such as Anaxagoras and Socrates were atta ...

in this discovery of the abstract as the emergence of paradoxes. Hui Shih’s famous statements—“a brown horse and a dark ox make ...

such as Chuang Tzu and the Tao Te Ching author, in criticizing the adulation of historical precedent; at the same time he borrow ...

the upper limit of the law of small numbers was being severely strained by around 300 b.c.e. In both cases we see a period of co ...

sophical mysticism, rather, was created by just this effort to forge a position uniting and transcending a host of philosophical ...

of power politics. At the same time, his occultist cosmology preserved the veneer of legitimation that the Legalists had strippe ...

ism, but its continuous hegemony should not be taken for granted. In the late Warring States, Confucianism was one faction among ...

first experts in the Legalist and Diplomatist texts were banned from govern- ment positions; then in 136 b.c.e. the Erudites wer ...

befitting an atmosphere of plots and coups. Divination schemes enjoyed a dangerous popularity in the Han and in subsequent dynas ...

More sharply in opposition was a group in the provinces, gathered around the prince of Huai Nan (in the south below the Yangtze) ...