German philosopher Karl Jaspers coined the term the axial age or axial period (Ger. Achsenzeit, "axis time") to describe the period from 800 to 200 BC, during which, according to Jaspers, similar revolutionary thinking appeared in India, China and the Occident. The period is also sometimes referred to as the axis age.[1]
Jaspers, in his Vom Ursprung und Ziel der Geschichte (The Origin and Goal of History), identified a number of key axial age thinkers as having had a profound influence on future philosophies and religions, and identified characteristics common to each area from which those thinkers emerged. Jaspers saw in these developments in religion and philosophy a striking parallel without any obvious direct transmission of ideas from one region to the other, having found no recorded proof of any extensive intercommunication between Ancient Greece, the Middle East, India, and China. Jaspers held up this age as unique, and one to which the rest of the history of human thought might be compared. Jaspers' approach to the culture of the middle of the first millennium BC has been adopted by other scholars and academics, and has become a point of discussion in the history of religion.
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Jaspers argued that during the axial age "the spiritual foundations of humanity were laid simultaneously and independently in China, India, Persia, Judea, and Greece. And these are the foundations upon which humanity still subsists today."[2] These foundations were laid by individual thinkers within a framework of a changing social environment.
Jaspers' axial shifts included the rise of Platonism, which would later become a major influence on the Western world through both Christianity and secular thought throughout the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance. Parsva[3][4] (23rd Tirthankara in 9th century BCE) and Mahavira, (24th Tirthankara in 6th century BCE), known as the fordmakers of Jainism lived during this age.[5] They propagated the religion of sramanas (previous Tirthankaras) and influenced Indian philosophy by propounding the principles of ahimsa (non-violence), karma, samsara and asceticism.[6] Buddhism, also of the sramana tradition of India, was another of the world's most influential philosophies, founded by Siddhartha Gautama, or the Buddha, who lived during this period; its spread was aided by Ashoka, who lived late in the period. In China, Confucianism arose during this era, where it remains a profound influence on social and religious life. Zoroastrianism, another of Jaspers' examples, is crucial to the development of monotheism[7] -- although Jaspers uses the Seleucid-era estimate for the founding of Zoroastrianism, which is actually the date of Cyrus' unification of Persia. The exact date of Zarathustra's life is debated by scholars with some, such as Mary Boyce, arguing that Zoroastrianism itself is significantly older.[7] Others, such as William W. Malandra and R.C. Zaehner suggest that he may indeed have been an early contemporary of Cyrus living around 600 BC.[8]
Jaspers also included the authors of the Upanishads, Lao Tzu, Homer, Socrates, Parmenides, Heraclitus, Thucydides, Archimedes, Elijah, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Deutero-Isaiah as axial figures. Jaspers held Socrates, Confucius and Siddhartha Gautama in especially high regard, describing each of them as an exemplary human being and paradigmatic personality.[9]
In addition to Jaspers, the philosopher Eric Voegelin referred to this age as The Great Leap of Being, constituting a new spiritual awakening and a shift of perception from societal to individual values.[10] Thinkers and teachers like the Buddha, Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Parmenides, and Anaxagoras contributed to such awakenings which Plato would later call anamnesis, or a remembering of things forgotten.
Jaspers described the axial age as "an interregnum between two ages of great empire, a pause for liberty, a deep breath bringing the most lucid consciousness".[11] Jaspers was particularly interested in the similarities in circumstance and thought of the Age's figures. These similarities included an engagement in the quest for human meaning[12] and the rise of a new elite class of religious leaders and thinkers in China, India and the Occident.[13] The three regions all gave birth to, and then institutionalised, a tradition of travelling scholars, who roamed from city to city to exchange ideas. These scholars were largely from extant religious traditions; in China, Confucianism and Taoism; in India, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism; in Persia, the religion of Zoroaster; in Canaan, Judaism; and in Greece, sophism and other classical philosophy.
Jaspers argues that these characteristics appeared under similar political circumstances: China, India and the Occident each comprised multiple small states engaged in internal and external struggles.
The word axial in the phrase axial age means pivotal. The name comes from Jaspers' use of the German word Achse, which means both "axis" and "pivot".
German sociologist Max Weber played an important role in Jaspers' thinking.[14][15][16] Shmuel Eisenstadt argues in the introduction to The Origins and Diversity of Axial Age Civilizations that Max Weber's work in his The Religion of China: Confucianism and Taoism, The Religion of India: The Sociology of Hinduism and Buddhism and Ancient Judaism provided a background for the importance of the period, and notes parallels with Eric Voegelin's Order and History.[13] Wider acknowledgement of Jaspers' work came after it was presented at a conference and published in Dædalus in 1975, and Jaspers' suggestion that the period was uniquely transformative generated important discussion amongst other scholars, such as Johann Arnason.[16] In literature, Gore Vidal in his novel Creation covers much of this Axial Age through the fictional perspective of a Persian adventurer.
Religious historian Karen Armstrong explored the period in her The Great Transformation,[17] and the theory has been the focus of academic conferences.[18] Usage of the term has expanded beyond Jaspers' original formulation. Armstrong argues that the Enlightenment was a "Second Axial Age", including thinkers such as Isaac Newton, Sigmund Freud, and Albert Einstein,[19] and that religion today needs to return to the transformative Axial insights.[20] In contrast, it has been suggested that the modern era is a new axial age, wherein traditional relationships between religion, secularity, and traditional thought are changing.[21]
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