Talk:Axial Age/Archive 1

Archive 1

What does the phrase Axial Age mean

Could someone please explain why that historical period around 600 B. C. is called "Axial". because people at that time couldn't think of a better name. I understand that some momentous changes occured then, but why "Axial"? Is it in the sense of pivotal? a turning point?

Axial in the phrase Axial Age should indeed be interpreted to mean pivotal. The name is derived from the German word Achse. Achse means both axis and pivot. A German will understand this to mean pivot. This word Achse has unfortunately been translated into the word axis and is used by English speaking scientists since. Signed: Poldertijger.

If NicM feels the need to squeeze again or to suggest that my article is in need of expert opinion, I'd feel much obliged if he would e-mail me first. To delete half my article and then remark that my article is unintelligable is a bit deceitful, isn't it. Signed poldertijger.

First of all, please read WP:NPA and WP:OWN. Secondly, whether you like it or not, the article is confusing and unclear to the non-expert, perhaps you might care to work on making it clearer rather than complaining and removing the tags. NicM 14:23, 28 January 2006 (UTC).

The reason I tagged it with expert is not because I don't believe it was written by one, but that it needs an expert who understands the subject to explain it more clearly than I can as a non-expert. NicM 14:24, 28 January 2006 (UTC).

I'm no expert on this matter, but I do know that Jaspers was not the only writer using the term Axial Age. Lewis Mumford also uses this idea, and he gives credit to Jaspers, but also to J. Stuart Glennie, a Scottish writer. Mumford says that the term has a double meaning: pivotal and ethical, from the word axiology, meaning that branch of philosophy having to do with defining the good. For Mumford the Axial Age marks the break from the "Heroic Age" in which brute force, trickery, and violence were accepted means of defending your tribe or nation's interest, and the "Classical Age" in which philosophy and religion take different approaches to life, sometimes but not always questioning violence, along with other traditions of the past. What makes the axial philosophers or thinkers of various cultures similar, then, is their ability to question ancient traditions. Whether they knew much about each other is not the central question.

I hope some of you, more learned scholars all, will look into Mumford.Beau in NC (talk) 20:34, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

As a follow up to my request that ye scholars look up Mumford's contribution, I have noticed a separate article about John Stuart Stuart-Glennie and it mentions both the Axial Age idea and Lewis Mumford.Beau in NC (talk) 14:26, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

Karen Armstrong's book _A History God_ explains this. Basically, prior to this age, we had pagans in the Middle East, Vedas in India (regarded as pagan), and pagans in the Far East. And then something happened. The Chinese folklore developed into Taoism and Confucianism, India developed Buddhism and Hinduism from the Vedas, and then Judaism, Christianity and Islam, as well as Plato. What they all had in common is the took the divinity out of pagan gods and placed it all in an unseen Ultimate Reality, variously known as Brahman, the Tao, YHWH, ect. This is a rather pivotal event, if you give any credence to, well, credence. 74.61.53.240 (talk) 04:26, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

In the 2012 book The Axial Age and Its Consequences (editors Robert Bellah and Hans Joas), Jaspers is identified as the key thinker for developing an important notion of axial age in reference to religious evolution, which has then affected many subsequent writers on the history of religion. Kaplanovitchskyite (talk) 21:21, 9 November 2021 (UTC)

Open letter to the self proclaimed editor NicM

My dear editor NicM,

I’m not opposed to the principle of editing. I understand that many of the entries in your Wikipedia have caused you a lot of grief. Far be it from me to be in the way of you doing your job in order to improve the Wikipedia; in the end I, an avid user of the encyclopedia, will benefit from your work. But I have a problem with the way you seem to see fit to do your job. In the particular case of the entry “Axial Age” you have put three tags that will effectively shy away people from reading the article. I don’t think this to be in the interest of Wikipedia. I will give an exposition of my arguments after explaining why I thought it necessary to write the entry “Axial Age”. In the books of Karin Armstrong this idea is mentioned a few times without an explanation being given. I tried to find the explanation on the internet, but there isn’t one. It is however remarkable that quite a few English speaking theologicians use the phrase “Axial Age”, so clearly there is a need for an entry in the Wikipedia. But when I tried to look it up I found a stub. Soon hereafter I came to find Jaspers’ vom Ursprung und Ziel der Geschichte in a second-hand bookshop. Now I got the information straight from the horse’s mouth. I found that Jaspers had been making a legitimate point and that’s why I set myself about to write the entry.

You have put three tags in the entry. My main complaint is that by doing so you are not solving any problem, if indeed there are some. I fear that by your attitude people will be dissuaded from committing themselves to the laborious job of improving the entry. The tags will be shown forever and people will just give up using the entry as a source of information. I ask you how we can get those tags removed. What do you mean that the article is in need of an expert? Jaspers certainly wasn’t an expert in the field of history but that didn’t refrain him from writing his book and coining the phrase “Axial Age”. This has proved to be to the advantage of theologicians, who can make use of the idea. Do you think I didn’t get the meaning of the idea “Axial Age” straight? Well, you didn’t exactly show yourself to be an expert when you edited the article and took away the item significance of the Axial Age. It may seem odd to you, but it was essential to Jaspers’ mind and should be part of any article concerning the phrase “Axial Age”. For all means and purposes I’m your expert on the item “Axial Age”; you have seen to that by putting the tags in the article and by doing so discouraging anybody to make a contribution. Don’t think that you will get help from the people that are using the phrase "Axial Age"; I’ve found that these people just don’t know the origin of the phrase “Axial Age”. To wit, the fact that they translated the phrase into “Axial Age” instead of “Pivotal Age”, wich they should have done. Or did someone made you believe that my article is flawed? Well, let him write a better entry, have him improve my entry, or, better yet, let me in on the secret. And let me make one more observation; the first person to write that the phrase “Axial Age” has been an inaccurate translation of the German word “Achsenzeit” can’t be totally out of his wits. I am, of course, referring to myself. Do you have a problem with the way I have put the article into words? Well, why did you make use of my phrases? Surely you can’t expect to improve the article that way. Then you have only yourselve to blame to have done a bad editing-job. Do you not understand some or most of the phrases that are used in the article? There may be a problem. Jaspers is using literary terms that shouldn’t be taken literally. Theologicians are used to this kind of language, but I can understand why this would pose a problem to others. If this is the sticking-point then this problem has to be remedied by explaining the phrases. Let me know and I wil set myself to improving the article. I can’t help pointing out that some readers have contributed to my article; they must have understood and thought it worthwhile their effort. The readers seem not to share your point of view.

You have altered my article to make it fit the standards of Wikipedia; I can live with that. You have callously removed an essential part of the information; I cannot let that stand. I don’t understand your problem with the significance of the Axial Age. It’s not a flame or a troll, so why remove what is an essential piece of information? Do not refer to the manuals again; they cover too wide a field to be of any use regarding the nature of your problem. Be specific: I’m not averse of improving myself but I don’t like to stumble in the dark. I’ve seen your personal page so I know that you are capable of giving this kind of information. You have set yourself to be an editor of Wikipedia; then act like one. There is more to the job of editor than just butchering a badly written article.

Frankly I don’t like the way you have treated me thus far. For the moment I’m willing to give you the benefit of the doubt. I suggest that we get over the bad start of our relationship. I’m willing to make the effort. I hope you can do the same.

Poldertijger 10:36, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Copyedit

I've made a major revision to the article, in attempt at clarity. It still needs a lot of work. I could not figure out what to do with the following:

Characteristically, the literature from the Axial Age shifts its focus of attention from the herditary nobility to the intellectual élite. Jaspers believes that the Axial Age has significance for the period after 200 BCE, because this age became the common denominator of mankind, the philosophy of this period is a call for limitless communication and the thinking of this period is the measure of the quality of thinking to all future generations. For this reason, Greece of 500 - 400 BCE, which benefited from the fruits of the Axial Age, ranks as "classical" in Western Culture.

and...

Significance of the Axial Age.

1. This age is the common denominator of mankind.
2. It is a call for limitless communication.
3. It is the measure of the quality of thinking to all future generations.

I am cutting it here in case another editor wants to use it as a basis for expansion. Jkelly 20:26, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

I like the way how this item has been written --poldertijger 18 september 2006

Removal of the picture?

Christianity wasn't around in the time period of 800 BCE - 200 BCE. The Axial Age is 200 years before Christianity. Intranetusa (talk) 02:00, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

Dates of the Axial Age?

Axial age lists that time period as 800 BC to 200 BC, but Civilization#Classical Antiquity calls it 600 BCE to 400 BCE. Where did Karl Jaspers write about it, and how did he originally define it? (cross-posted to all three Talk pages) 75.5.198.37 (talk) 17:21, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

What is the Axial Age

The page presents a lot of information but it's all so general and mixed up that I can't tell what is special about the axial age. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mahaabaala (talk • contribs) 08:42, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

Cross-Communication Between India, Greece, China

The article's assertion of there being no extensive inter-communication between the diffent regions of this time has to be modified. The cross-connection between Greece and India brought on during and after Alexander cannot be underemphasized. In addition, Asoka, had missionary activity going on over a wide ranging area from Greece to China, with a Buddhist mission located in Athens itself. Hindu missionaries were prevalent in southeast Asia and Indonesia. China was connected with Buddhism even before the Hellenistic era. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.27.190.56 (talk) 19:21, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

Criticism missing!

Bazuz (talk) 23:40, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

NPOV

As above, where is the criticism? Iain Provam is a distinguished professor of biblical history and Amazon describes his new book thusly:

"The contemporary world has been shaped by two important and potent myths. Karl Jaspers' construct of the "axial age" envisions the common past (800-200 BC), the time when Western society was born and world religions spontaneously and independently appeared out of a seemingly shared value set. Conversely, the myth of the "dark green golden age" as narrated by David Suzuki and others asserts that the axial age, and the otherworldliness that accompanied the emergence of organized religion, ripped society from a previously deep communion with nature. Both myths contend that to maintain balance we must return to the idealized past. In Convenient Myths , Iain Provan illuminates the influence of these two deeply entrenched and questionable myths, warns of their potential dangers, and forebodingly maps the implications of a world founded on such myths." Dougweller (talk) 10:01, 1 August 2013 (UTC)

[1] looks useful as does the whole book. Dougweller (talk) 10:19, 1 August 2013 (UTC)

I see the book is duly mentioned now, so I am not sure why the NPOV tag remains in place. I also don't quite see what is treated as controversial here. The quote given above cites two "romanticized" views of the Axial Age, one saying it was good, because it created civilization out of savagery, the other saying it was bad because it created civilization out of glorious noble savages. These are value judgements which are trivially going to be open to criticism, and I suppose they are what Provam describes as "myths" (an unfortunate choice of terminology, as he apparently uses "myth" in the popular sense of "lie" rather than in the sense of, well, myth, which seems stupid when the topic under discussion is, in fact, philosophy, religion and mythology).

But neither of these opposing views criticizes the concept of the axial age as an umbrella term for "stuff that happened to Old World philosophy in the Iron Age", nor does Provam appear to have a problem with the historical claim "organized religion popped up all over the Old World in the Axial Age" (which is all Jaspers's term is supposed to describe), instead he appears to argue against naive value judgements attached to this historical development. Since the Wikipedia article just says "the Axial Age happened" (or rather, "'Axial Age' is Jaspers's term for stuff that happened"), and not "we on Wikipedia are very grateful the Axial Age happened so we can all enjoy our literacy and technology", I don't really see any NPOV problem. I am reacting to the amazon blurb above, I did not read the book. --dab (𒁳) 18:10, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

So is this resolved then as spurious tagging? I will assume so and age out the 2 y old tagging if so. Lycurgus (talk) 17:35, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

I've removed it. I don't see a POV problem in the current page. QVVERTYVS (hm?) 15:52, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

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Criticism #2

It seems that there's more criticism to the Axial Age concept than is being described in the article. I know too little on the topic, but just a quick Google-search gave me this:

• Nicolas Baumard, Alexandre Hyafil, and Pascal Boyer (2015), What changed during the axial age: Cognitive styles or reward systems?, Commun Integr Biolv.8(5); Sep-Oct 2015 PMC4802742: "The standard approach to the Axial Age defines it as a change of cognitive style, from a narrative and analogical style to a more analytical and reflective style, probably due to the increasing use of external memory tools. Our recent research suggests an alternative hypothesis, namely a change in reward orientation, from a short-term materialistic orientation to a long-term spiritual one."
• Greg Johnson (blog), Jan Assmann’s Critique of the Axial Age: "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)."
• academlib.com, Karl Jaspers, Max Weber and the Axial Age: "The Axial-Age thesis has been much criticized in contemporary research (Boy and Torpey 2013). There are three basic objections to the Axial Age thesis."

I expect that there's more. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 17:19, 26 October 2016 (UTC)

characteristics

I feel that the characteristics are not really listed. Yes China, India, etc, did struggle internal and externally but there is no explanation as to why. I believe that the thinkers and movement section doesn't do any thinkers justice. I find this whole article a bit confussing and single sides from only Jasper's view and no one elses. Smmcmil2 (talk) 23:57, 24 September 2017 (UTC)

totally agree that what is an axial age (for Jaspers and others) is unclear in this entry. Kaplanovitchskyite (talk) 21:21, 9 November 2021 (UTC)

Problems with the Reception section

The Reception section is much too long to be without subheadings. It also contains many (unattributed) rejoinders to criticism of Jaspers written matter-of-factly, in Wikipedia voice. These should be either attributed to a reliable source or removed as original research. Unfortunately, I know little more about the Axial Age concept than I've learned from this article, so I'm hoping someone else can attribute the text and sort out OR better than I can. Daß Wölf 22:16, 27 September 2019 (UTC)

Scope?

Should this page be about the specific term axial age or the the broader concept (including its earlier/later development and influence; see, for example [2])? Currently, the main definition is restricted to "the term"[3] coined by Jaspers. 86.186.168.224 (talk) 17:30, 27 July 2021 (UTC)