| The great existential philosopher, Karl
Jaspers (1883-1969), first originated the term "Axial Age" in his
book entitled The Origin and Goal of History (published in 1949).
Rather than trying to explain Dr. Jasper's concept, let me use his own
words taken from (pages 99-100) his book entitled Way to Wisdom (published
1951).
"
... In the years centering around 500 B.C. -- from 800 to 200 -- the
spiritual foundations of humanity were laid simultaneously and
independently in China, India, Persia, Palestine and Greece. And
these are the foundations upon which humanity still subsists today. ...
"
... If there is an axis in history, we must find it empirically in
profane history, as a set of circumstances significant for all men,
including Christians. It must carry conviction for Westerner,
Asiatics, and all men, without the support of any particular content of
faith, and thus provide all men with a common historical frame of
reference.
"The
spiritual process which took place between 800 and 200 B.C. seems to
constitute such an axis. It was then that the man with whom we live
today came into being. Let us designate this period as the
"axial age." Extraordinary events are crowded into this
period. In China lived Confucius and Lao Tse, all the trends in
Chinese philosophy arose ... In India it was the age of the Upanishads
and of Buddha; as in China, all philosophical trends, including
skepticism and materialism, sophistry and nihilism, were developed.
In Iran Zarathustra put forward his challenging conception of the cosmic
process as a struggle between good and evil; in Palestine prophets
arose: Elijah, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Deutero-Isaiah; Greece produced
Homer, the philosophers Parmenides, Heraclitus, Plato, the tragic poets,
Thucydides and Archimedes. All the vast development of which these
names are a mere intimation took place in those few centuries,
independently and almost simultaneously in China, India and the West.
... " (SOURCE)
Many believe that we are now living in another Axial Age in which
long established ways of understanding life and our world are being
challenged and in many cases replaced. Will we learn how to
incorporate the knowledge of the histories of our religion into our
established belief systems and elevate ourselves to a higher spiritual
level, or will we ignore the research of some of our best scholarly minds
and retreat back into the dark ages? This section of the website
is a work in progress. Your thoughts and suggestions are welcome. |
