The Sociology of Philosophies

(Wang) #1

to major intellectual networks, and their conflicts with their compatriots are
not at all contrary to the usual dynamics of creative network contact. And all
of them were prolific publishers, a pattern correlated with eminence (Price,
1986; Simonton, 1988); they had the emotional energy and the cultural capital
that is typical of creative success. Rediscoveries of “lost works” would not be
possible at all unless there was some connection to the networks of the
intellectual world so that they could be retrieved. And that means intellectuals
must make those connections in their own lifetime, or their work will never
make it after their death.
What about creative work that is just plain buried forever? Here it becomes
relevant to know what intellectual life is like as one moves away from the
center. As we get farther from the major figures on the network charts, it
becomes increasingly characteristic for philosophers to develop the ideas of a
lineage chief, to add criticisms, explications, and commentaries. They are not
creative precisely because they are followers. This is quite common in the ranks
of “secondary” figures, although this pool also includes figures who stand on
their own, who fail to make the deep intellectual impact that would leave them
in the historical first rank. A typical secondary figure of this independent sort
would be Yang Chu (fl. 380 b.c.e.) in the generation after Mo Ti and before
Mencius. Yang Chu broke through prevailing consensus by preaching the
doctrine that the natural is not inherently moral or sociable, and that radical
individualism is itself natural (Graham, 1978: 59). In Greece a comparable
level of importance would be represented by Gorgias, the famous rhetor and
Sophist; or Xenophanes, who attacked anthropomorphic polytheism; or Stilpo,
the most acute of the Megarian logicians. These men were not epigones; some
indeed were extremely eminent in their own day. Mencius declared, somewhat
rhetorically, that “the words of Yang Chu and Mo Tzu fill the world” (Mencius
3b.9), and Gorgias in his day was perhaps more famous than Socrates. That
these secondary figures differ from the major ones becomes apparent only in
the long run, as their ideas are sifted over; some are very influential, but their
ideas are too easily absorbed by the discourse of the next generation (as with
those of Yang Chu and Xenophanes), others proving ephemeral because the
network turns in a different direction (as with Gorgias).
No buried treasures here; perhaps we may find real treasures as we reassess
their merits, but there is nothing buried about them. Can closet creativity then
be lurking in the ranks of the minor figures? But minor figures are the typical
epigones—loyal, scholarly, perhaps polemical against opponents. What they
lack above all is originality and depth. Nor are minor figures necessarily
obscure in their own day. Let Wang T’ung stand for many (224 in the key to
Figure 6.2): a famous Confucian lecturer in the capital city of Ch’ang-an ca.
600 c.e., teacher of hundreds of students, including many of the politicians


62 • (^) The Skeleton of Theory

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