1.3 A Second Axial Age?
Last modified 05/26/2008
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Much of the discussion of the Axial Age has been distorted by attempts to
posit a second Axial Age in a kind of postmodern reaction to modern secularism.
But as we examine the Axial Age, its significance, and place in world history,
we notice, especially as we examine the data of the Greek Axial interval, its
strange resemblance to the rise of modernity, and the way in which the pattern
of world history is structured around a sequence of 'axial' periods and the
almost 'medieval', or what we will call 'mideonic' periods in between them. As
we map out the full context of the transformations of classical antiquity we
will come to see that they are part of a larger pattern. In that light we
are drawn to the sense that the real continuation of the Axial interval lies in
the analogous, and equally sudden, period of advance triggering the vast changes
and transformations we call the 'modern world'. What we mean by 'modernity' is
not completely clear and yet we use the term spontaneously. What do we mean by
it? In fact, it is a kind of 'axial' period initiating, as did the Axial Age, a
new era in world history, if we can understand its dynamics and timing. The
question of religion will be seen to have blinded us to the deeper dynamic
behind the larger process in its great scale and cultural breadth. The question
has been confused by notions of 'Western Civilization', a red herring that has
drawn attention away from what is really happening.
We table, then, our suspicions, on the basis of macrohistorical observation, about the symmetry behind the rise of the modern and the Axial period, and can see the query as to a 'second Axial Age' resolved by the facts of the modern transformation, despite its surface differences from the characteristics of the earlier period. |
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