The Axial Age and Its Consequences Hardcover – September 24, 2012

The Axial Age is an era centered on the period around 500 BCE, when a remarkable body of revolutionary achievements in thought erupted across a broad band of Eurasia. In Greece, there were the pre-Socratic philosophers, followed by Socrates himself, Plato, and Aristotle. About the same time, if the traditional chronology is to be trusted. such reforming prophets as Amos, Isaiah, and Jeremiah arose in ancient Israel. In India Gautama Buddha appeared, accompanied by the maturation of Hindu thought found in the Upanishads. In ancient China, Confucius, Mencius, and the author of the Daodejing illuminated the Far Eastern manifestation of the Axial Age. There was thus, it seems, a remarkable synchronicity of epochal advances stretching from southeastern Europe to the plains of northern China.

The period not only saw the appearance of major thinkers and their writings, but a new criticality that was prepared to examine, and if necessary to discard the conventional wisdom. In most cases this development occurred in small cities and city states. Subsequently, the rise of empires, such as the Hellenistic kingdoms, the regime of Ashoka, and the Han Dynasty served to blunt the effect of the Axial Revolution. Yet it may be argued that this barrage of innovation, occurring some 2500 years ago, was the breakthrough to the modernity in which we still live.

Sixty-three years ago the concept of the Axial Age rose to prominence thank to a remarkable book, The Origin and Goal of History, by the philosopher Karl Jaspers. Subsequent research has traced the concept back to the writings of A.-H. Anquetil-Duperron (1731-1805), a French scholar of ancient Iran.

With regard to Jaspers, it is easy to see why this grand concept would appeal to a Europe that was just recovering from the nihilism of Nazism. Over time, though, interest faded, to revive recently, thanks in large measure to the efforts of Shmuel N. Eisenstadt. The new interest seems to be fueled by a broader process, that of globalization, which in the view of some observers is fostering a new Axial Age.

The problem has now been addressed by the present weighty volume combining the efforts of eighteen distinguished authorities. There is much to ponder in this book, so my conclusions must be regarded as tentative.

The key problem is this: What can account for this extraordinary synchronization of breakthroughs? After all, in those remote times there was very little communication among the ancient civilizations involved. Merlin Donald, an academic psychologist represented in the book, has proposed an answer in terms of cultural evolution. He believes that, beginning in prehistoric times, humanity advanced through several distinct phases: the episodic, which yielded to the mimetic, and that in turn to the mythic. The theoretic stage, corresponding to the Axial Age, concluded the sequence.

In what is perhaps the most penetrating of all the essays in this book, the Egyptologist Jan Assmann returns a mixed verdict. "I confess that I cannot bring myself to really believe in the "Axial Age" as a global turn in universal history occurring grosso modo in the middle of the first millennium BCE. On the other hand, I find the concept of axiality (with pre- and post-axiality) a valuable and even indispensable analytic tool in the comparative study of cultures. . . . [The] 'breakthroughs' occurred at different times and to different degrees under different conditions and with different consequences."

In short the thesis remains tantalizing, but not yet fully secured.

This is a thick anthology with multiple views concerning Karl Jasper's concept of the Axial Age, the period around 500 BCE in which philosophy blossomed as the result of the teachings and writings of such seminal figures as Socrates, Shakyamuni Buddha, Confucius, and Laozi. This was a transformation of consciousness unique in human history. Anyone studying early development of human thought needs to be familiar with this concept. It has been controversial, with the valid criticism that similar changes have occured in other cultures in later eras.

This book will give a very full understanding of the Axial Age concept and associated contentions. My only carps are that it is repetitious, even by the standards of multi-authored volumes. More important, some discussions seem to be quibbles on ideological issues, rather than subtantive. It is also hyper abstract in the Continental tradition. I would have prefered more details on the context of Axiality, that is what these seminal figures taught and where they agreed or disagreed. Also more details on pre-Axial thought.

These criticisms aside, this is worth the attention of all with serious interest in intellectual history.

This book has a lot of value in it, enough that I have to give it a four star rating. But it is a very big tent, and one that admits too many to the party. Wandering through this crowd you'll encounter more than one camel that has nosed its way all the way in. :-)

Probably if you're considering buying or reading this book, you already think you have some interest in the idea of the axial age, so you may not like what I think is one of the books great strengths: that it has essays critical of the idea, and hence critical for the basis of the collection included. That's the good part of this being a very big tent. The downside is that there are two or three essays that I think border on post-modernist mumble-bluster. Their content could have been reduced to a few short paragraphs of marginal value.

In the end, I emerged from reading this book with the impression that it would be better (in my own work) to put more emphasis on the 'Axial' rather than on the 'Age', meaning that the claimed concurrency of events is less convincing to me than the claim of common themes. I was less convinced by those who argued that the particulars overwhelm the commonalities.

What is difficult to discuss (and this book doesn't really focus on the question) is that there is one species launching into all of these diverse experiments and, in the 21st Century we are headed into an emergent global culture. The essay that comes closest deals with evolutionary basis for discussing the idea of the Axial Age.

In short, you're bound to find something worthwhile here. I don't know if owning the book is crucial for you, so you might want to peruse it in a library to decide if you want to keep it around for reference first.