The Sociology of Philosophies

(Wang) #1

challenges were not lacking; debates among Confucians, Taoists, and Buddhists
took place at many courts during the period of fragmentation after the Han,
during the centralized T’ang dynasty, and indeed down to the time of the
Mongol regime. The material underpinnings of intellectual life expanded when
an official examination system was established. In the T’ang and later dynas-
ties, there were at times several such examination systems, for Buddhist and
Taoist monks as well as for the state bureaucracy. All this one might expect
would have stimulated a great deal of philosophical innovation. But we find
surprisingly little outside of Buddhism.
This material provides an opportunity to sharpen our theory through
comparison. On many occasions structural conflict fosters philosophical crea-
tivity. We have seen it in China in the Warring States period, with both the
polarization of positions and the push toward higher levels of epistemological
and metaphysical abstraction during the “hundred schools.” We see again a
brief creative antagonism in the Three Kingdoms period after the Han downfall
between Taoist and Confucian tendencies transmuted into a higher philosophi-
cal plane. In Greece the same dynamic of innovative opposition and the
sharpening of abstractions went on through 12 to 15 generations of debate;
here too we found periods of relative stagnation, such as the loose and
inconclusive syncretisms of Middle Platonism between 100 b.c.e. and 200 c.e.,
and we witnessed the long-term conservatism of the Epicureans.
Simmel’s sociological theory fits one side of the problem: conflict increases
solidarity and conformity within a group. Hence we would expect a time of
heightened conflict to be one in which opposing sides stick dogmatically to
their positions. The level of intellectual sophistication would decline as nuances
are driven out and positions of compromise are forced to join battle on one
side or the other. This is a pattern we find in intellectual life, as well as in
political, military, and personal conflicts. It helps explain why philosophers can
lose higher levels of abstraction achieved by earlier generations and revert to
crude reifications, dogmatism, and name-calling rather than analytical ad-
vance. The lower rather than the higher level usually characterized the debates
among Taoists, Buddhists, and Confucians.
Our theoretical problem is to integrate this sub-theory into the overall
picture. We have abundant evidence that conflict is sometimes creative. The
law of small numbers gives a structural shape to this struggle. The issue is to
show what kinds of structural rivalry drive innovation by opposition, with
associated shifts upward in the level of abstraction and critical self-reflection,
and what kinds of conflict have the opposite effect on intellectual life, produc-
ing stagnation and particularism. Part of the resolution lies in distinguishing
two kinds of innovation: that which takes place on the particularistic level, as
in the formation of religious cults and of anthropomorphic or magical doc-


Innovation by Opposition: Ancient China^ •^163
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