Robert N. Bellah, theorist of the Axial Age
3,787 words
Part 1 of 4
Only European peoples have made history and discovered the idea of time, and this is why the idea of progress is uniquely European: Only European history has been characterized by progress, and there can be no conception of historical time and no history without progression or without man becoming conscious of his role in the making of history, as well as the realization that only the mind can be the adjudicator of the truth. (more…)
1,581 words
English original here
Dans son nouveau livre, From Akhenaten to Moses: Ancient Egypt and Religious Change [D’Akhenaton à Moïse : l’ancienne Egypte et le changement religieux] (Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 2014), l’égyptologue Jan Assmann dit que le concept d’Age Axial du philosophe Karl Jaspers n’est « pas une théorie mais un mythe scientifique » (p. 94). (more…)
Karl Jaspers, 1883–1969
3,106 words
English original here
Du XIXe siècle jusqu’aux années 1960 et 1970, les livres de l’Histoire Mondiale reconnaissaient les divers accomplissements de toutes les civilisations dans le monde, mais la plupart des auteurs et des enseignants prenaient comme allant de soi le fait que les Européens méritaient plus d’attention en particulier au vu de leur influence incontestable (more…)
3,055 words
Thinkers East and West
Part 1 here
The Presocratic Discovery of Logos
Part 2 of this essay goes beyond the quantitative observation that Presocratic Greece on its own produced more original thinkers than the rest of the Axial world combined, (more…)
1,425 words
Translations: French, Spanish
In his new book, From Akhenaten to Moses: Ancient Egypt and Religious Change
(Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 2014), Egyptologist Jan Assmann argues that philosopher Karl Jaspers’ concept of the Axial Age is “not a theory but a scientific myth” (p. 94).
According to Jaspers, the centuries between 800 and 200 BCE are a turning point in world history. During this Axial Age, Biblical monotheism and Zoroastrianism emerged in the Near East; (more…)
2,821 words
. . . was the Presocratic discovery of logos.
The idea of an “Axial Age” was a boon to the ideological drive after WWII to envision the history of all cultures as a “collective” undertaking between “connected” peoples. The behavior of Germany during Second War was testimony, apparently, of what happens when an otherwise modern culture refuses to join with the world of cosmopolitanism in defense of its ethnic integrity. (more…)
Karl Jaspers, 1883–1969
2,847 words
French translation here
From the nineteenth century through the 1960s and ’70s, World History books did recognize the varying accomplishments of all civilizations in the world, but most authors and teachers took for granted the fact that Europeans deserved more attention particularly in view of their irrefutable influence on the rest of the world after their discovery of the Americas, development of modern science and global spread of modern technology.
(more…)
Heidegger walks his path
2,760 words
Translator anonymous
In an earlier essay I pointed out the importance of clearing up the points in which a connection between the doctrines of the traditional East and certain very advanced intellectual trends of the West emerges. I then said that in many cases a serious and not amateurish knowledge of the former might well serve to complete the latter, liberating them from their aspect as opinions of a purely individual speculative nature, and also from everything affected by an atmosphere of crisis, such indeed as is that of our own modern Western civilization. (more…)
