the most general (i.e., philosophical) turf itself. This is one reason why, despite
so many pronouncements to the contrary, modern philosophy has not faded
away but prospered.
I will not carry the detailed analysis of the intellectual world down to our
own times; I take it only to three generations ago, the philosophers of approxi-
mately 1900–1935. As throughout, my guiding thread through the labyrinth
of philosophical positions is the inner network of personal relations, rivalries,
and master-student chains among the most influential philosophers. New prob-
lems emerge for this network analysis as we come closer to the present.
Previously, the methodological problem was too little information about the
lives and personal contacts of the philosophers. From the 1700s onward
documentation becomes ever more abundant, and this creates an opposite kind
of procedural problem. The networks on which my analysis is based consist
in ties not among just any persons at all, but among those who are influential
enough to be remembered by generations in the future. The difference between
a minor and a major figure is indexed by just that feature. We have seen that
minor philosophers (for instance, in T’ang China or Hellenistic Greece) are
often famous in their own day, but later fade away into the recollection of a
name and a brief label for their doctrine.
As we near the present, we lose the ability to discern who will have this
kind of lasting influence. There is little doubt that Kant is of long-term
importance. But can we say the same of Bergson, or Russell, or Sartre? Is
Nietzsche or Whitehead a figure of enduring significance? There are empirical
reasons why I expect many of the great names in our own memories to fade
out for subsequent centuries. In Chapter 2 we found that over the 36 genera-
tions of Greece and the 63 generations of China, there was an average of 0.4
to 0.8 major and 1.0 to 1.9 secondary philosophers per generation. Even in
peak periods of creativity, the maximal numbers are about 2 major philoso-
phers and 3 to 5 secondary philosophers per generation. Similar levels are
found in Europe in the medieval period and up through the 1700s and even
the mid-1800s. For the early 1900s, though, using the same criterion of space
devoted to them in standard histories, I find some 8 candidates for the rank
of major philosopher.^1
We lack even this much perspective on the period 1935–1965, the genera-
tion just before our own. Consider the judgments of the historians writing
around 1890–1910, including philosophers active in their own right such as
Windelband or Royce, on the thinkers of their own midcentury background.
The towering figure for many of them (e.g., for Merz, 1904–1912) is Lotze,
who by current criteria seems secondary at best. Royce writes of “The Spirit
of Modern Philosophy” (1892) as if Idealism still rules the roost, of course a
620 •^ Intellectual Communities: Western Paths