formal system of oppositions, which Bhartrihari and Dignaga regard as the source
of illusion.) The structuralist-postmodernist emphasis on “difference” adds an
ontological tone that is not far from the original Buddhist conception of world
illusion arising through name-and-form.
- In other words, Indian intellectual life incorporated into about 200 years a range
of arguments that spread over 600–700 years in Europe. This should cast doubt
on our image of the West as uniquely dynamic intellectually. Everywhere the pace
of argument on the abstraction sequence is stalled from time to time by external
factors. Such periods occur not only in the East (e.g., in India, the period after
1500) but in the West as well, where the Renaissance period, 1400–1600, is largely
a diversion from the abstract philosophy of the medieval Christian universities.
European philosophy after 1600, its own ideological assertions to the contrary
notwithstanding, to a large extent revived and continued the higher levels of
abstraction attained by medieval scholasticism. We can add to this interruption the
1300s, when the higher levels of scholasticism were obscured from being transmit-
ted further by conditions which are explained in the Coda to Chapter 9. To make
the comparison fair, we should take account of the fact that the parallels to modern
European philosophy begin in India around 550–750, the time of Bhartrihari,
Dignaga, Dharmakirti, Prabhakara, and Shankara. Indian philosophy from about
800 to 1100 seems in a slowdown compared to the half-dozen generations preced-
ing and following, probably owing to external conditions affecting the base of
intellectual life (discussed in Chapter 5 in relation to the conditions for the popu-
larity of tantric magic). If we could subtract the dead spots from both sequences,
we might say that the parallel between India around 500–1300 and Europe about
1200–1900 boils down to a comparable number of generations in each during
which the networks had enough continuity to keep the abstraction-reflexivity
sequence moving.
- Thus Heidegger’s and Sartre’s radical particularism was constructed in reaction to
Husserl’s radical realism of universals, so to speak—Husserl’s program of searching
for the deepest levels of formal ontological structures framing experience. This is
a typical case of innovation by split within a creative network, and of creation by
negating a rival’s central premise.
- The question of the sincerity of faith sometimes raised about famous figures on
the religious-philosophical divide is doubly useless. To ask whether Ockham or
Descartes was sincere in his professions of religious faith or only adopting a
protective mask is to ignore the structural situation which such individuals occupy:
it is precisely because they are transforming the deep troubles of the argument
space that they are not easily categorized on one side or the other. From a
micro-sociological viewpoint, the question of sincerity is naive. Thinking takes
place by the flow of emotional energies focused in intellectual networks, recom-
bining within a thinker’s mind ideas representing membership in particular camps.
The creative thinker is making and transforming alliances in the realm of symbols.
In struggles of faith versus reason, creative developments fuse concepts which cut
across both sides of the struggle. It is possible, of course, that a philosopher’s in-
ternal conversation might include discussions about what it would be politic to say
Notes to Pages 825–831^ •^1029
