cal and religious practices (see Figure 4.1). The Mohists emerged two genera-
tions later with doctrines explicitly contradicting many Confucian points. Both
schools of moralistic activism were soon challenged by Yang Chu, with his
anti-moralistic and anti-activist alternative of withdrawing from society into
individual selfishness. Mencius in turn counterattacked the Yang Chu move-
ment with an explicit defense of the goodness of human nature; this opened
up yet another slot in intellectual space which Hsün Tzu filled with the
opposing doctrine that human nature is evil and requires the imposition of
social and ritual restraints. By the time of Mencius (ca. 300 b.c.e.), the
intellectual network was beginning to take off into a self-conscious concern
for its concepts and its methods of argument. Oppositions were renewed on a
higher level of abstraction: idealism versus naturalism, sophistry versus tran-
scendent standards, the rectification of names and standards versus the acon-
ceptual Nameless of the Tao Te Ching.^1
The oppositions which eventually became philosophy began in the external
arena of military-political strife. Wars among the contending states made
regimes unstable and put a premium on alliances, and hence on diplomats
circulating in a cosmopolitan network along with reformers and political
place-seekers. External politics gave birth to an intellectual attention space,
rising to higher levels of abstraction and dividing along inner lines of fraction-
alization. The inner focus of attention which constitutes an intellectual com-
munity became autonomous as the community acquired a distinctive network
structure: the intersection of multiple factions at a few key centers of debate.
It is conventional to explain Confucianism by the breakdown of political
order in the Warring States. But the timing is not very close. Disintegration of
the Chou dynasty into a large number of feudal states was already advanced
when the Chou capital was sacked by an uprising in 771 b.c.e. Yet the first
philosopher, Confucius, did not begin teaching until about 500. Around this
time the intensity of warfare escalated, and chivalrous ideals of knightly
combat gave way to ruthlessness and strategy. Armies expanded from relatively
small numbers of knights to massive peasant infantries. States began to levy
large masses of workers to build roads and canals, clear swamps, and construct
defensive border walls. Along with this we find an upsurge of trade, the spread
of metal coinage, and tax collection by state officials. A new level of organi-
zation came into being, superimposed on the earlier society of independent
clans and fiefs. Religion had been a state cult, legitimating royal authority.
Now the structure of clan society was subjected to new geopolitical relations,
a cosmopolitan arena that simultaneously replaced old symbolic frameworks
while offering opportunities to mobilize movements beyond and across local
regimes.
The Confucians proposed to overcome both the warfare and the symbolic
138 •^ Intellectual Communities: Asian Paths