scholars tend to regard the members of the “Old Text school” as progressives,
rationalists who punctured the occultist cosmologies promulgated by their
“New Text” rivals. Nevertheless, this kind of “rationalism” may be sterile for
philosophical innovation. To insist on the letter of old texts is less innovative
than to produce new metaphysical constructions, even if the latter is done is
the false guise of promulgating fake ancient texts. A comparative proof is that
India never had anything like an “Old Text school” of scholars puncturing the
archaizing claims of the predominant publication practice. Indian Buddhist and
Hindu philosophies alike were dominated by their own version of the “New
Text school,” and it was via this vehicle that both proceeded much further in
the abstraction-reflexivity sequence than did Chinese philosophy.
The textual-scholastic mode is a vehicle within which the creativity of net-
work competition may take place, to the extent that the usual dynamics of in-
ternal opposition and external shock are present. There is another version,
which we might call “classificatory scholasticism,” which is a genuine arresting
of movement at a constant level of the abstraction-reflexivity sequence. In this
case there is no creativity, at least not of the sort which makes famous names
in the long-term histories; here we find lineages filled with names remembered
as minor at best. Nevertheless, there is a dynamism of classificatory scholasti-
cism as well, making it an activity that takes up its own modicum of creative
energy and focuses attention on the inner rankings of the intellectual network
during these periods.
Consider the later Neoplatonists of the Roman period. They rely on au-
thorities, above all Plato, Aristotle, the Chaldean Oracles, the Orphic hymns;
their constant reference is “as the gods say,” “the theurgists say,” and the like
(CHLG, 1967: 280–282).^2 Their method is the textual commentary, unimagi-
native, hair-splitting, full of repetition and jargon. But they are not stagnant
in the sense of lacking movement from one scholar to the next. Over time there
builds up a tendency to argue for conclusions in an explicit chain of deductive
argument, demonstrated in formal Euclidean proofs. The Neoplatonist cosmol-
ogy, a hierarchy of emanations from the highest unity down through the
plurality of the lower spheres, is constantly expanding. Later members of the
school multiply levels, introducing further hypostases into the three expounded
by Plotinus, subdividing into further triads, inserting demons and heroes
among gods and disembodied souls. These cosmologies become increasingly
concrete and particularistic, regressing in the abstraction-reflexivity sequence;
this regression is combined with innovativeness in the sheer quantitative ex-
pansion of complexity within these systems.
The dynamics of this intellectual game are to classify and to list. The Vedic
traditions are full of numbered lists. Buddhist texts of the early period list the
four kinds of insight, the four kinds of Right Effort, five Moral Powers, seven
796 •^ Meta-reflections