such as Chuang Tzu and the Tao Te Ching author, in criticizing the adulation
of historical precedent; at the same time he borrowed from the newer meta-
physics by turning the concept of tao into a naturalistic principle of order in
the physical world.
Compared to the Greeks, Chinese intellectuals of this time placed little
stress on the preeminence of metaphysical abstraction. Although there were
several arguments driving toward idealist or transcendental conceptions, there
was no move like that of Plato and his followers to identify levels of conceptual
abstraction with degrees of metaphysical reality. The book later known as the
Tao Te Ching, which appeared under an archaizing pseudonym late in this
period, built upon the epistemological reflections of Kung-sun Lung and the
“School of Names” for its conception of the Nameless. Here the greatest
metaphysical reality is attributed to what one might call the last word (or the
last non-word) in philosophical argument; and the Nameless is identified with
a preexisting conception, the tao (way), as the inner principle of the natural
and social worlds.
But this route toward an explicit metaphysics of abstractions does not go
any farther. The stimulating effect of logic and epistemology on cosmology,
characteristic of both the Greek classic period and the Chinese “hundred
schools,” breaks off. It is here that we find a crucial difference between the
two intellectual communities. The Greek community carried on its “argumen-
tative” period for 12 generations, most famously from 500 to 300 b.c.e., with
another half-dozen generations of epistemological argument down through
Carneades, the Stoic logicians, and Aenesidemus’ skepticism. For the Chinese,
the sequence was shorter: four or five generations at most, from Yang Chu
down to Han Fei Tzu. Then external forces intervened to limit sharply the
extent of debate within the intellectual world, with the unification of China by
the Ch’in and its successor, the Han dynasty. The opportunity to pile on
successive levels of reflection was cut short. The intellectual maneuvers that
came next were much more constrained to appeal to non-intellectual audiences.
Instead of pushing farther into epistemology and abstract metaphysics, Chinese
philosophy moved back toward lay concerns. What became in retrospect the
distinctively “Chinese” cast of philosophical ideas was formed in the Han
period of centralized authority by the fusion of intellectually generated abstrac-
tion with externally conditioned political-religious ideology.
Overcrowded Attention Space and the Generation of Syntheses
Just as in Greece the outpouring of schools in the generation following Socrates
resulted in overcrowding and instability of most lines of transmission, in China150 •^ Intellectual Communities: Asian Paths