Mo Ti, who branches off from one of these Confucian schools another
generation later, was building intellectually upon his opposition to the Confu-
cian “establishment.” The case of Mo Ti’s eminence is structurally similar to
Confucius’, especially since in both cases it is unclear which parts of their
doctrines—and their canonical texts—are the work of the founders and which
are the work of followers. There is reason to believe that much of the philo-
sophical refinement of the older part of the Mo Tzu is the work of Mo’s
principal pupil, Ch’in Ku-li (28 in Figure 4.1). This casts light on the position
of Yang Chu, who appears in this generation as an isolated secondary figure.
But Yang Chu stirred up great controversy in his day with his doctrine that
the Way of Heaven is to nourish the vital needs of the individual, rather than
assume social obligations. Moreover, Yang Chu is structurally locked in an-
tagonism with the Confucians, and especially the Mohists, as he is known to
have debated with Ch’in Ku-li. In view of the likelihood that “individualist”
or “agriculturalist self-sufficiency” doctrines branched off from the Mohist
lineage around this time (e.g., Hsu Hsing in the next generation after Ch’in
Ku-li), it appears that we have here another case where creative alternatives
are being formulated in counterpoint with one another.
The main cases of horizontal isolation that remain consist of one major
figure and several secondary ones. The major philosopher is Wang Yang-ming,
who enlivened the dead orthodoxy of the Ming dynasty. But even though he
lacks a rival of major stature, he belongs to a cluster in his youthful and
mature generations (i.e., 1465–1500 and 1500–35) which includes several
secondary figures both from the dominant Ch’eng-Chu Neo-Confucians and
in opposition, in addition to those who branch off from Wang’s own school.
Here there is at least partial eminence against his major eminence. This leaves
two secondary figures: Ch’en T’uan is a borderline minor figure, a Taoist
cosmologist ca. 950 c.e., a time when not much is happening apart from minor
figures of the Ch’an lineages. Ch’en T’uan is not a vertical isolate, since he
leads into what eventually becomes the neo-Confucian cosmologists four gen-
erations later.
The most isolated figure in the entire Chinese chart is Wang Ch’ung, the
only name of any significance for four generations of the Later Han (i.e., the
entire period from 35 to 165 c.e.). Wang Ch’ung is also among the most
unusual intellectually as well, an outspoken rationalist and enemy of supersti-
tion. In his themes he continues the critical scholarship of the Old Text school,
which had arisen in opposition to the occultism, false antiquarianism, and
downright forgeries of the so-called New Text school. That is to say, this was
a battle within Confucianism between the occultist synthesis which Tung
Chung-shu had brought to prominence around 130 b.c.e., and the movement
of critical textual scholars which had come to prominence with Liu Hsin884 •^ Appendix 1