Axial Age and Its Consequences

Format: Hardcover Language: English ISBN: 0674066499 ISBN13: 9780674066496 Release Date: October 2012 Publisher: Belknap Press Length: 560 Pages Weight: 2.15 lbs. Dimensions: 1.5" x 6.5" x 9.5" The first classics in human history--the early works of literature, philosophy, and theology to which we have returned throughout the ages--appeared in the middle centuries of the first millennium bce. The canonical texts of the Hebrew scriptures, the philosophical writings of Plato and Aristotle, the Analects of Confucius and the Daodejing, the Bhagavad Gita and the teachings of the Buddha--all of these works came down to us from the compressed period of history that Karl Jaspers memorably named the Axial Age. In The Axial Age and Its Consequences, Robert Bellah and Hans Joas make the bold claim that intellectual sophistication itself was born worldwide during this critical time. Across Eurasia, a new self-reflective attitude toward human existence emerged, and with it a