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Author: J©đhann P©Łll © rnason
Publisher: BRILL
Published: 2005
Total Pages: 586
ISBN-13: 9004139559
DOWNLOAD EBOOKA collection of essays by social theorists, historical sociologists and area specialists in classical, biblical and Asian studies. The contributions deal with cultural transformations in major civilizational centres during the "Axial Age," the middle centuries of the last millennium BCE, and their long-term consequences.
Author: Shmuel N. Eisenstadt
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Published: 2012-02-01
Total Pages: 572
ISBN-13: 1438401949
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis book presents a new and original analysis of the great ancient civilizations, focusing on the breakthroughs and their institutionalization in Greece, Israel, China, and India. The conditions under which these civilizations developed are systematically explored. For comparative purposes, the civilization of Assyria, where such a breakthrough did not take place is analyzed. Attention is given to the transformation of modes of thought and symbolism. Special focus is brought to the development of the great religions and the perception of tension between the transcendental and mundane orders and between rulers and other elites.
Author: Robert N. Bellah
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Published: 2012-10-31
Total Pages: 561
ISBN-13: 0674067401
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis book makes the bold claim that intellectual sophistication was born worldwide during the middle centuries of the first millennium bce. From Axial Age thinkers we inherited a sense of the world as a place not just to experience but to investigate, envision, and alter. A variety of utopian visions emerged and led to both reform and repression.
Author: Saïd Amir Arjomand
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Published: 2021-03-01
Total Pages: 272
ISBN-13: 1438483414
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe post–World War II idea of the Axial Age by Karl Jaspers, and as elaborated into the sociology of axial civilizations by S. N. Eisenstadt in the later twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, continues to be the subject of intense scholarly debate. Examples of this can be found in recent works of Hans Joas and Jürgen Habermas. In From World Religions to Axial Civilizations and Beyond, an internationally distinguished group of scholars discuss, advance, and criticize the Jaspers-Eisenstadt thesis, and go beyond it by bringing in the critical influence of Max Weber's sociology of world religions and by exploring intercivilizational encounters in key world regions. The essays within this volume are of unusual interest for their original analysis of relatively neglected civilizational zones, especially Islam and the Islamicate civilization and the Byzantine civilization, and its continuation in Orthodox Russia.
Author: Christopher Peet
Publisher: Springer
Published: 2019-06-05
Total Pages: 354
ISBN-13: 3030144321
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis book introduces readers to the concept of the Axial Age and its relevance for a world in crisis. Scholars have become increasingly interested in philosopher Karl Jaspers’ thesis that a spiritual revolution in consciousness during the first millennium BCE decisively shaped world history. Axial ideas of transcendence develop into ideologies for world religions and civilizations, in turn coalescing into a Eurasian world-system that spreads globally to become the foundation of our contemporary world. Alongside ideas and ideologies, the Axial Age also taught spiritual practices critically resisting the new scale of civilizational power: in small counter-cultural communities on the margins of society, they turn our conscious focus inward to transform ourselves and overcome the destructive potentials within human nature. Axial spiritualities offer humanity a practical wisdom, a profound psychology, and deep hope: to transform despair into resilience, helping us face with courage the ecological and political challenges confronting us today.
Author: Robert N. Bellah
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Published: 2017-05-08
Total Pages: 777
ISBN-13: 0674252934
DOWNLOAD EBOOKA New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice An ABC Australia Best Book on Religion and Ethics of the Year Distinguished Book Award, Sociology of Religion Section of the American Sociological Association Religion in Human Evolution is a work of extraordinary ambition—a wide-ranging, nuanced probing of our biological past to discover the kinds of lives that human beings have most often imagined were worth living. It offers what is frequently seen as a forbidden theory of the origin of religion that goes deep into evolution, especially but not exclusively cultural evolution. “Of Bellah’s brilliance there can be no doubt. The sheer amount this man knows about religion is otherworldly...Bellah stands in the tradition of such stalwarts of the sociological imagination as Emile Durkheim and Max Weber. Only one word is appropriate to characterize this book’s subject as well as its substance, and that is ‘magisterial.’” —Alan Wolfe, New York Times Book Review “Religion in Human Evolution is a magnum opus founded on careful research and immersed in the ‘reflective judgment’ of one of our best thinkers and writers.” —Richard L. Wood, Commonweal
Author: Jenny Reddish
Publisher: Seshat Histories
Published: 2019-12-08
Total Pages: 520
ISBN-13: 9780996139564
DOWNLOAD EBOOKApplying insights from a massive historical research project-Seshat: Global History Databank-this edited volume reveals that there was no single "Axial Age" in human history. Instead, it points to cross-cultural parallels in the co-evolution of egalitarian ideals and constraints on political authority with sociopolitical complexity. The first book-length publication to make use of Seshat's systematic approach to collecting information about the human past, Seshat History of the Axial Age expands the Axial Age debate beyond first-millennium BCE Eurasia. Fourteen chapters survey earlier and later periods as well as developments in regions previously neglected in Axial Age discussions. The conclusion? There was no identifiable Axial Age confined to a few Eurasian hotspots in the last millennium BCE. However, "axiality" as a cluster of traits emerged time and again whenever societies reached a certain threshold of scale and level of complexity. Co-editors Daniel Hoyer and Jenny Reddish paired some of the world's leading historians, archaeologists, and anthropologists with members of the Seshat team. Hoyer, Project Manager with Seshat, is a historian and social scientist specializing in cross-cultural historical analysis. Reddish, Seshat's Lead Editor, is an anthropologist working on the material correlates of cultural systems from societies around the world. She is based at the Complexity Science Hub, Vienna. Seshat: Global History Databank was founded in 2011 to bring together the most current and comprehensive knowledge about human history in one place, collecting what is known about the social and political organization of human societies to track how civilizations have evolved over time. Seshat History of the Axial Age is the first entry in the Seshat Histories series.
Author: Heiner Roetz
Publisher: SUNY Press
Published: 1993-01-01
Total Pages: 392
ISBN-13: 9780791416495
DOWNLOAD EBOOKConfucian Ethics of the Axial Age describes the formative period of Chinese culture--the last centuries of the Zhou dynasty--as an early epoch of enlightenment. It comprehensively reconstructs the ethical discourse as thought gradually became emancipated from tradition and institutions. Rather than presenting a chronology of different thinkers and works, this book discusses the systematic aspects of moral philosophies. Based on original texts, Roetz focuses on filial piety; the conflict between the family and the state; the legitimating of the political order; the virtues of loyalty, friendship, and harmony; concepts of justice; the principle of humaneness and its different readings; the Golden Rule; the moral person; the autonomous self, motivation, decision and conscience; and various attempts to ground morality in religion, human nature, or reason. These topics are arranged in such a way that the genetic structure and the logical development of the moral reasoning becomes apparent. From this detached perspective, conventional morality is either rejected or critically reestablished under the restraint of new abstract and universal norms. This makes the Chinese developments part of the ancient worldwide movement of enlightenment of the axial age.
Author: Michael Scott
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 2016-11-01
Total Pages: 388
ISBN-13: 0465094732
DOWNLOAD EBOOK"As panoramic as it is learned, this is ancient history for our globalized world." -- Tom Holland, author of Dynasty and Rubicon Twenty-five-hundred years ago, civilizations around the world entered a revolutionary new era that overturned old order and laid the foundation for our world today. In the face of massive social changes across three continents, radical new forms of government emerged; mighty wars were fought over trade, religion, and ideology; and new faiths were ruthlessly employed to unify vast empires. The histories of Rome and China, Greece and India-the stories of Constantine and Confucius, Qin Shi Huangdi and Hannibal-are here revealed to be interconnected incidents in the midst of a greater drama. In Ancient Worlds, historian Michael Scott presents a gripping narrative of this unique age in human civilization, showing how diverse societies responded to similar pressures and how they influenced one another: through conquest and conversion, through trade in people, goods, and ideas. An ambitious reinvention of our grandest histories, Ancient Worlds reveals new truths about our common human heritage. "A bold and imaginative page-turner that challenges ideas about the world of antiquity." UPeter Frankopan, author of The Silk Roads
Author: Vittorio Cotesta
Publisher: BRILL
Published: 2021-08-16
Total Pages: 653
ISBN-13: 9004464727
DOWNLOAD EBOOKVittorio Cotesta’s The Heavens and the Earth traces the origin of the images of the world typical of the Graeco-Roman, Ancient Chinese and Medieval Islamic civilisations. Each of them had its own peculiar way of understanding the universe, life, death, society, power, humanity and its destiny. The comparative analysis carried out here suggests that they all shared a common human aspiration despite their differences: human being is unique; differences are details which enrich its image. Today, the traditions derived from these civilisations are often in competition and conflict. Reference to a common vision of humanity as a shared universal entity should lead, instead, to a quest for understanding and dialogue.
