Some scholars have argued that the major world religions that we have today started in a period called the “Axial Age.” The Axial Age was first proposed by Karl Jaspers (d.1969), and later taken up by other scholars such as Karen Armstrong. It posits that there was an earth-shaking process that occurred between 800 and 200 BCE in several regions of the world—China, India, the Middle East and Greece— independently and without contact with one another.
The Axial Age is described as a period of intense spiritual and philosophical creativity and genius, pioneering a new way of being human. This is seen as a shift or a turn, as if on an axis, away from localized concerns and toward transcendence. In China arose the Hundred Schools of Thought, encompassing all the various Chinese philosophies we know of today, especially Confucianism and Daoism. In India came the Upanishads, which formed the philosophical foundation of Hinduism. Buddhism and Jainism were established as radical spiritual innovations. In Israel/Palestine, monotheism was developed with the Hebrew prophets such as Elijah, Isaiah, Jeremiah, etc. Greece pioneered philosophical rationalism with Plato, Homer, etc., that would have a huge impact on Western thought. Christianity and Islam, the current two biggest religions in the world, are seen as later flowerings and rediscoveries of that same spirit that kicked off the Axial Age.
Proponents of the Axial Age argue that all the foundations that underlie current civilization came into being during that age, or to put it in Jaspers’ own words, “Man, as we know him today, came into being.” Man, becoming conscious of “being” and experiencing his own limitations and powerlessness, strives for liberation and redemption, and in so doing, experiences absoluteness and transcendence. An entirely different kind of human being is created—one based on empathy and compassion and the abandonment of egotism, greed and violence. Despite the hugely divergent convictions and creeds proposed by the Axial thinkers, sages, prophets and mystics in very different cultural and religious milieux, human beings for the first time valued the individual person immeasurably and put emphasis on a common humanity rather than on one’s own tribe or clan. True religion, according to the Axial thinkers, means seeing the individual as one with humanity, and therefore treating others as how one wants to be treated. This is a radical departure from practicing religion as just ritual acts and beliefs. This deep sense of ethics and moral consciousness distinguished the “Axial religions” from earlier forms of religion that catered to only a certain group or tribe, and that limited their concern for only local problems and issues. The Axial sages, such as the Buddha and Jesus, took on the “problem” of the whole world, the whole of humanity.
When we look into the Axial spirit—what the founders of the world religions stood for—we see that even now we are far from realizing their vision and mission. Modern society, in spite of its stupendous technological achievements, has not surpassed the Axial Age in considering what it is to be human.
ติดต่อเรา (02) 800-2630