Abstract
Axial theory locates the turning point in history in the Axial Age, the first millennium BCE prior to Christ, in which Hebrew prophets and scripture, Greek tragedians and philosophers, Indian Brahmins and the Buddha, and Chinese sages and teachers of worldly ethics began the process of desacralizing nature and the human world. Karl Jaspers’ later American disciple, the sociologist Robert Bellah, presents the Axial Age in epic spread in his most important work on the subject. Later, we will bring to bear Jaspers’ student and critic Eric Voegelin, who turned the notion on its head. We conclude by showing how Girard’s idea of history brings a closure to this cycle, by showing the apocalyptic implications of the concept of humanity in purely secular terms.
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Further Reading
Bellah, Robert N. Religion in Human Evolution: From the Paleolithic to the Axial Age. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2011.
Bellah, Robert N., and Hans Joas. The Axial Age and Its Consequences. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2012.
Eisenstadt, S. N., Werner-Reimers-Stiftung., Makhon le-meḥḳar ʻal shem Heri S. Ṭruman., and Mosad Ṿan Lir bi-Yerushalayim. The Origins and Diversity of Axial Age Civilizations. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1986.
Jaspers, Karl. The Origin and Goal of History. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1953.
———. Vom Ursprung Und Ziel Der Geschichte. Zürich: Artemis-Verlag, 1949.
Jaspers, Karl, and Rudolf Bultmann. Myth and Christianity : An Inquiry into the Possibility of Religion without Myth. Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 2005.
Schwartz, Benjamin I. “The Age of Transcendence.” Daedalus 104, no. 2 (1975): 1–7.
Voegelin, Eric. The Ecumenic Age. Order and History 5 vols. Vol. IV, Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2000.
———. Israel and Revelation, Order and History. 5 vols. Vol. I, Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2000.
———. The New Science of Politics, Modernity without Restraint. The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2000.
———. The World of the Polis, Order and History. 5 vols. Vol. II, Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2000.
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Gardner, S. (2017). The Axial Moment and Its Critics: Jaspers, Bellah, and Voegelin. In: Alison, J., Palaver, W. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Mimetic Theory and Religion. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-53825-3_13
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-53825-3_13
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