The Sociology of Philosophies

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nent teachers and pupils. Such are easy to illustrate from all portions of his-
tory, and the analysis of chains will occupy us in the chapters that follow. Here
are a few of the famous ones: Thales-Anaximander-Anaximenes; Parmenides-
Socrates-Plato-Aristotle-Theophrastus-Arcesilaus-Chrysippus; Panaetius-Posi-
donius-Cicero; Whitehead-Russell-Wittgenstein; or, to approach the present,
Brentano-Husserl-Heidegger-Gadamer (as well as Heidegger-Marcuse and
Heidegger-Arendt). Creativity is not random among individuals; it builds up
in intergenerational chains.
The third characteristic of intellectual fields is structural rivalry. Intellectual
work is almost always concentrated at the same time as other work of a similar
degree of innovativeness and scope. The major philosophers appear in pairs
or trios, rival positions developing contemporaneously with one another (i.e.,
they are active within the same generational span, approximately 35 years).
We can take as emblematic that Heraclitus, the partisan of absolute flux, was
contemporary (ca. 490–70 b.c.e.) with Parmenides, the partisan of absolute
immobile Being. Epicurus and Zeno the Stoic established within five years of
each other (306–301 b.c.e.) the two schools that were to dominate Hellenistic
and Roman intellectual life for many centuries. In a later epoch, the leading
Christian and pagan philosophers, Origen and Plotinus, emerged close together
(ca. 220–50 c.e.), splitting off from the same teacher. In China ca. 340–300
b.c.e. Mencius, Chuang-tzu, and Hui Shih were contemporaries and rivals;
centuries later (1170–1200 c.e.), the rationalist and idealist branches of Neo-
Confucianism were championed by the acquaintances Chu Hsi and Lu Chiu-
yüan. Nearer our own day, the logical positivists and the phenomenologists
and existentialists not only were contemporary but developed some of their
most memorable doctrines in opposition to the other. The pattern of contem-
poraneous creativity by opponents of comparable stature is nearly universal
across history.
Such rivalries are not necessarily personal ones. Contemporary advocates
of rival positions do not always direct their attacks against one another, or
even pay attention to them. Epicurus and Zeno had their own agendas and
argued mainly against philosophies and doctrines of preceding generations;
explicit rivalry between their schools developed only in succeeding generations.
At founding moments, spaces open up which are filled not merely by individu-
als but by a small number of intellectual movements which restructure the
attention space by pressing in opposing directions. It is conflicts—lines of
difference between positions—which are implicitly the most prized possessions
of intellectuals. For this reason the history of philosophy is the history not so
much of problems solved as of the discovery of exploitable lines of opposition.
Have we forgotten the individual? After all, not all intellectuals belong to
these groups. Proud, isolated Heraclitus is not the only one of his kind. Some


6 •^ Introduction

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