The Axial Age
500 years of thought
What is the Axial Age
• First great age where the thoughts of different
sages is written down
• Much of the ideas written down would
influence later thought across nations
– Religious leaders
– Secular leaders
• Focus on China, India, Greece and SW Asia
Thinkers of the Age
I. Thoughts of the sages written down took hold
gradually, (sacrilege to write/confide to writing)
II. Eurasia’s several sages
I.
II.
III.
IV.
Iran/Persia: Zoroaster (insecurely dated)
Ahura Mazda: Single deity of good
Dual forces that shape the world good/evil
Forces of light belong to Ahura Mazda, darkness
Ahriman
V. Notion of Good and Evil that dominates mainstream
thinking for 1000 years
India
I. Texts of the Veda multiplied/handed down by
Brahman, moral implications of religious life
II. Vardhamana Jnatrputra: 6th or early 5th century
BCE, aka Mahavira “the great hero”, founder of
Janism
III. Janism: A way of life to free the soul form evil
by asetic practices: Chastity, detachment, truth,
selflessness - - - I.
Janism is such a religious life that a member could
only accept what is freely given preferring starvation
to an ungenerous life.
India
IV. Buddhism
A.
B.
C.
D.
Gautama Siddharta: lived between 6th and early 4th
century BCE
Tradition of life he came up with is a Code of Life rather
than religion. Never appears to have made any
assertions about a God.
Called the Buddha, or Enlightened One
Objective for Buddhism is to escape desire – the cause of
unhappiness,
A.
B.
C.
Meditation
Prayer
Unselfish behavior of varying intensity for different individuals
according to their vocation.
India
IV. Buddhism
E. Aim of Buddhism: Nirvana “extinction of the
flame”. Some gather in monasteries to help
guide each other toward this end
F. Early texts, cling to idea of the self survives the
death of the body – perhaps many deaths
G. Famous text from China, Buddha promises a
righteous person can be born an emperor for
eons, and could remember past lives
India
IV. Buddhism
H. Old/New Religion?
1.
2.
Some argue that this is really a form of old pagan
practices
May be true, but they are NEW because they upheld
effectiveness of moral practice, along side formal
rituals to adjust the relationship with nature or with
whatever is divine.
Significance of Jews in 2nd part of 1st
Millennium
I.
Religion – influence 2 other religions (Islam,
Christianity)
II. Eastern Europe, Jewish communities were strong in
est. towns and worked as artisans
III. Chroniclers
A.
B.
C.
Documented where they inhabited in the in the zone
between Mesopotamia and Egypt, west of Dead Sea and
the River Jordan
Arrived during a period of war and wandering after
enslavement in Egypt
Moses led them or liberated them, no other evidence
confirms this.
Significance of Jews in 2nd part of 1st
Millennium
III. Chronicles
D. 8th and 9th century BCE neighboring people through
their writings confirm and illustrate the essential
features of the story told in Jewish writings. Most
Jews were in Jordan Valley around this time
(farming)
E. Women’s role
1.
2.
3.
Valued as producers of children, and labor
Suitors had to pay a bride price, could be years of labor to
the family
Many women, even to date, have few rights under Jewish
law.
Significance of Jews in 2nd part of 1st
Millennium
IV. Jewish Kingdoms (Judah, Israel)
A. Often fought each other, had unity at times
B. Writers recall the ideal times of power under
Kings Saul, David and Solomon
C. Function of the state:
1.
2.
warehouse food, defend it from invaders.
Administer justice, (bible full of examples)
D. These kingdoms also subject of invasion as
evidenced by records, Jews would be dispersed
again.
Significance of Jews in 2nd part of 1st
Millennium
V. Jewish Identity: despite traumas of 7-5
centuries BCE, Expressed in writings of the
Torah (1st 5 books of bible)
1. Did not turn from their God at this period, reevaluated relationship, one true God
2. Suffering was the trials of faith and punishment for
sins, especially failure to acknowledge God’s
Uniqueness (10 Commandments)
3. Deliverance is in the next life, reward for fidelity in
this life
4. Living by the Talmud (rabbinic commentaries of life,
law, and culture, and every day life)
Significance of Jews in 2nd part of 1st
Millennium
VI. Last Great Teacher
1. Jesus who died around 33 CE.
2. Greatest in terms of the scale of his influence
3. Controversial in that his followers were the ones
who collected and wrote down his teachings.
4. We have almost no independent confirmation that
he existed.
5. Better information about Jesus than other figures
during this period.
6. Collections of his teachings were collected approx .
30-40 years after his death, making them a bit more
reliable.
Significance of Jews in 2nd part of 1st
Millennium
VI. Last Great Teacher
7.
Secularly: Considered an independent minded Rabbi with
radical message
8. Followers called him “Christ”, corruption of Greek Hamashiad, or messiah, anointed one
9. Anointed one was to designate the King they hoped for at the
end of history to bring heaven to earth.
10. Message was uncompromising: Priesthood needed to be
purged of corruption, temple at Jerusalem “cleansed” of
money changers,
11. Biggest claim was that humans could not gain divine favor by
appealing to a kind of bargain with God – the Covenant of the
Jewish Tradition – God freely gave or withheld favor or grace
12. Humans were dependent upon God’s grace.
Summing Up Axial Age Thinking
I. Teachers of age were highlighted in a world
that had increasing numbers of new
religions, most did not survive.
II. This is a period that the distinction between
a religion and secular life begins. Spiritual
firmament was always apart of intellectual
innovation.
I.
We cannot say that Confucius founded a religion,
but we cannot think of his ideas as purely
secular
Summing Up Axial Age Thinking
III. Secular thinkers
A. Greek sages emerged during this age along side the
founders of the new religions of Asia
B. Aristotle, Athenian Aristocrat Plato
C. Aristotle left great body of work on science, logic,
politics, and literature, that has no equal in the West
for centuries
D. The whole of western philosophy since the classical
age of Athens in the 4th BCE has been footnotes to
Plato
E. Other thinkers in Asia and Asia minor parallel these
ideas of scientific and logic.
Thoughts of the Axial Age
A. Idea of a God, divine creator responsible for
everything in the universe.
B. Creation: new ideas of creation, The idea A creation
story, before just how the universe became what it
was
C. Idea of “nothing” is introduced. Beyond experience,
uttermost limits of though. “nothing” allowed
thinkers to reformulate their ideas of the order of
nature
D. Greece, 5th Century BCE: Leucippus devised the
atomic theory – matter is not a continuous whole but
is composed of tiny particles.
Thoughts of the Axial Age
• E. Jews; provide most challenging thoughts of
creation from nothing, also new philosophical
twist to divine thinking
• F. Conclusions followed
– A creator was unique, no predecessor
– He was purely spiritual
– Eternal existence outside our ideas and notions of
time, he is not a “product” of creation;
unchanging, nothing greater exists, his power has
no limits
Thoughts of the Axial Age
G. Monotheism: one unique God, has power
over nature, new idea
H. China, Buddhists dispensed with creator
alluding to the everlasting influence of the
universe, and endlessness of it
1. Greeks had a hierarchy of Gods
2. Indians had (good and evil)
Thoughts of the Axial Age
I.
Divine Love
1.
2.
J.
Greeks ignored the idea that once a god created he remained
interested in his creation
Aristotle felt that God being perfect needed nothing else (thus not
interested in his creation)
Axial age belief that God’s interest was specifically focused on
them, humankind was special
1.
2.
3.
6th Century BCE, philosophers: taught that “all things that are born
with life in them should be treated as kindred
Aristotle developed a hierarchy of living souls in which human souls
were superior to those of plants and animals, due to human’s ability
to rationalize.
Xunzi: Chinese described later in the next century that Man has
spirits, life, and perception, and a sense of justice; his is the noblest
of all earthly things
Thoughts of the Axial Age
L. Humankind’s place in creation opened question
of whether they were its lords or stewards.
1. Special relationship with God: Jews began to use the
idea of divine love to express this relationship.
2. Jesus seized upon the identification of God and love,
it was emotionally satisfying, love is a universal
emotion, it freed people from the problems of
everyday life. This made Christianity become
universally accepted, eventually.
New Political Thinking
I. Two Contrasting Political Ideas
A. Those that emphasized Freedom (to release
human goodness)
B. Those that emphasized discipline (to restrain
human wickedness
C. The state was an agent for Virtue
D. Biblical account of Genesis is most widely
expected compromise. God created humans
good and free.
New Political Thinking
I. Two Contrasting Political Ideas
E. Abuse of Freedom made people bad???
Unpersuasive?, If Adam was good, how could he
use freedom for evil?
F. Thus the invention of Diabolical devises
(serpent) corruption of goodness from outside
G. Genesis leaves politics with a difficult balancing
act between freedom and force.
New Political Thinking
II.
Political Pessimism
A.
B.
C.
D.
Plato: The way to overcome human deficiencies was to
strengthen the state, The Republic was a harsh ideal state
with strict rules.
Objections to Plato: censorships, repression, militarism,
regimentation, extreme communism, collectivism, selective
breeding of superior stock of humans, rigid class structure,
active deception of people by the state, all distressful
Key: Plato was that political power should be concentrated in
a self electing class of philosopher rulers “kings” called
guardians.
Reasoning of Plato still has appeal to state builders, The
Guardians become the inspiration and intellectual ancestors
of the elites that will rule
New Political Thinking
III. Political Pessimism – Chinese
A. More severe than Plato
B. The ruler should be bound by law, (Aristotle agreed),
but Confucius said that ethics should override
obedience to law. The age old tension between
rulers and rights.
C. 4th century China – Legalist School of thought, virtue
– or pretended virtue – was needed. The principal
of goodness was meaningless
D. Society required only obedience. What the law
actually said was irrelevant, Morality was nonsense.
New Political Thinking
E. Difference in Chinese thoughts:
1. Previous ideas and thoughts of human law tried to
make human law more moral by aligning it to divine
law
2. Chinese legalists were reacting against generations
of disastrous feuding among the warring states. The
ethics of Confucians did not prevent this warring
atmosphere
3. The only good was the good of the state. Law and
order were worth tyranny and injustice. Ethics was a
“gnawing worm” that would destroy the state.
Political Optimism
I. Most Sages of Axial Age were optimistic. They
did believe that human nature was good
A. Confucianism decided that the state should liberate
subject to fulfill their potential
B. Greek sages advocated democracy that entrusted
citizens (not women or slaves or children) with a
voice in the affairs of the state.
C. For Chinese thinkers did have similar individualistic
doctrines , but these did not question the role of
monarchy. Confucius advocated a return to a golden
age supposedly at the founding of Zhou.
Political Optimism
II. Greek Sages
A. The state was a mechanism to be tinkered with as
needed (republican, aristocratic, democracy)
B. Aristotle, first political scientist, made a survey and
study of Greek political systems
1.
2.
3.
4.
Thought Monarch was the best system in Theory.
Aristocratic Government more practical, manageable
number of superior men to administer the state
Democracy, good idea, led to mob rule
Best system: mixed in which aristocracy predominated,
under the rule of law. Embodied in the Roman state of the
2nd half of the millennium. Model for Western
Government.
Political Optimism
III. Jesus
A. New commandment: “love one another” to replace
all laws.
B. Kingdom of Heaven was more important than even
the Roman Empire (this world is of little importance)
C. The Great ironic Joke: Render unto Caesar what is
Caesar’s and unto God what is God’s. In other words
all Jews understood this to mean to despise or even
to ignore the state, for everything, to the Jew’s, was
God’s. It is an invitation for Civil Disobedience
Political Optimism
III. Jesus
D. Jesus was dangerous for the state, he welcomed
social outcasts as his followers – prostitutes, tax
collectors, “sinners”, and people from Samaria who
were despised by the Jews as both sinners and
heretics.
E. He favored the weak (children, women, the lame,
the blind, beggars, the meek) against the powerful
and promised them that they would inherit the
earth.
F. This radical bias caused both Roman and Jewish
authorities to put him to death
Challenging Illusion & Magic
A. Breakthroughs in mathematics
1.
2.
3.
Indians “discovered” it idea of “nothing”, and Infinity, numbers
were limitless
Geometry: showed how the mind could each realities that the
senses obscure, (circle , line)
Reality could be invisible, untouchable and ACCESSIBLE to
Reason.
B. Pythagoras
1.
2.
3.
4.
Musical harmonies can be expressed as arithmetical ratios
Consistent ratios characteristic of right angled triangles
Formulated the notion of real numbers, used to classify
objects (2 flowers, etc)
Numbers exist apart from the objects they enumerate. Exist
even if there were nothing to count.
Challenging Illusion & Magic
C. Reason
1. Parmenides: Greek from southern Italy, if
geometrical figures were real, you believe in truth of
a super sensible world – for example the perfect
square
2. Reason opened the caverns of the mind, where
truths lay.
3. Rationalism: an escapist alternative to reality,
Parmenides thought he could prove that change was
illusory and differences deceptive, and that only \
and eternal were real
Challenging Illusion & Magic
C.
Reason
4.
Zeno
a.
b.
D.
E.
Teachers of India and Greece, China showed intense interest in
proposing rules for correct use of reason
Aristotle’s common sense into intelligible rules. To this day these rules
are used without us knowing about it. He was the best analyst of how
reason works, if it works at all
1.
2.
F.
An arrow in flight always occupies a space equal to its size, therefore it is always at
rest.
Matter is invisible because “if a rod shortened every day by half its length, it will still
have something left after ten thousand generations.”
He would take valid arguments and brake them down into phases,
Syllogisms, in which we can infer a necessary conclusion from two premises
that prior demonstration or agreement have established to be true.
All men are mortal, Socrates is a man, if follows that Socrates is mortal
Nyaya School of commentators in India analyzed logical processes in 5
stage breakdowns that resemble Aristotle’s syllogisms.
Science
A. Starts with the distrust of the senses Lu Shi Chong
Quiz in 3rd century actually able to see that some
metals were softer than others and could be
combined to create harder ones
B. Sought to penetrate the veil and expose underlying
truths. Democritus in the 5th and early 4th century
stated that “truth lies in the depths.”
C. Idea of supernatural and natural developed at this
point, In 650 BCE The Chinese Shen Xu is said to have
taught that ghosts were just the producers of the
fears and guilt of those who see them.
Science
D. Confucians deterred his followers from
thinking of the dead until they know the
living
E. Confucians professed interest in human
affairs – politics and practical morality – and
were indifferent to the rest of nature, except
to dig out superstition
Science
E. Greeks, origins are inseparable from magic
1. Nature worship, and shamanistic attempts to
penetrate the mysteries of the unseen by right and
ecstasies.
2. Omens and Ideas were thought to be understood
through Magic
3. Science needed a methodology : Aristotle was the
best representative of Greek science, we must have
facts, he stated, and proceeded to gather them.
4. Archimedes: discovery of the lever
5. Erastohenes produced almost exactly accurate
calculation of the size of the earth
Science
F. Chinese Science
1. Daoist doctrine of nature, habits of observation
and experiment developed from the magical
omen seeking practices of early Daoism
2. Word for “temple” means watchtower – a
platform from which to observe the natural
world and launch explanations of its phenomena.
3. Daoism encouraged the beginnings of scientific
practice; observation, description, classification,
and experiment
Medicine
A. Greece 5th century BCE, Hippocratic school.
Secular school,
1. Health was essentially a balance among 4 substances
in the human body
2. Blood, Phlegm, black and yellow bile
3. Adjust the balance & you alter the patients state of
health
4. Condemned patients in the West to centuries of
treatments that relied on diet, vomiting, laxatives,
and bleeding.
5. Hippocrates felt that the body was not harmed by
Gods but by disease that affects the body
Medicine
B. Chinese & Hippocrates started a presumption that
nothing needs to be explained by the divine.
C. India, closely applied similar learning. The Arthaveda,
earliest known work of Indian medicine, diseases and
demons are more or less identical and are treated
with charms or drugs.
D. From 6th century the emergence of professional
schools of medicine with training and literature, areas
are similar, but no direct historical link between
Greeks, Chinese, and Indian schools of medicine
Skepticism
A. New line of thinking in Axial Age, world as
purposeless arising out of the scientific point of
view to observe with suspicion
B. Aristotle’s “final cause”, the purpose of a thing
that explains nature – becomes irrelevant, The
world is a random event. If the world has no
purpose, it was not made for human beings,
who are reduced to insignificance.
C. World without a purpose needs no God
Skepticism
D. Epicurus interpreted the Atomic Theory as –
in a world of atoms and voids, there is no
room for “spirits.” There is no fate,
1. Since some atoms are perishable, and everything
is composed of them, there can be no immortal
soul.
2. Gods if they exist all inhabit an imaginary world
that we have nothing to hope and nothing to
fear.
Skepticism
E. Greek schools
1. Greek schools reformulated and refocused their
philosophy on practical issues.
2. The Stoics was one of these schools focusing in on
the best practical choices for personal happiness.
3. Stoicism appealed to the Roman elite and though
them had an influence upon Christianity
4. Zeno of Athens in the late 4th century it started from
the insight that nature is morally neutral, only
humans act as good or evil.
Skepticism
E. Greek Schools
5. Stoic ideas of acceptance of fatalism and
indifference for remedies for pain were similar to
Buddha and his followers.
6. Most effective in the West. It supplied the
source of guiding principles of the ethics of most
Western elites since its emergence.
Summing it Up
I. There are several parallels in thought during
the 500 years leading up to the Christian era.
II. Often in the areas that boarder each other
influence was shared
III. Era was central to the key changes in religion
and changes in secular leaders raised
questions of human nature and of how we
can devise appropriate social and political
solutions to this problem.