04.18.06
Axial Synchronism
Armstrong in The Great Transformation completely distorts the issue of the synchronous emergence of the Axial areas. Here’s the classic description from Jaspers.
The most extraordinary events are concentrated in this period. Confucius and Lao-tse were living in China, all the schools of Chinese philosophy came into being, including those of Mo-ti, Chuang-tse, Lieh-tsu and a host of others; India produced the Upanishads and Buddha and, like China, ran the whole gamut of philosophical possibilities down to skepticism, to materialism, sophism and nihilism; in Iran Zarathustra taught a challenging view of the world as a struggle between good and evil; in Palestine the prophets made their appearance, from Elijah, by way of Isaiah and Jeremiah to Deutero-Isaiah; Greece witnessed the appearance of Homer, of the Philosophers—Parmenides, Heraclitus and Plato—of the tragedians, Thucydides and Archimedes. Everything implied by these names developed during these few centuries almost simultaneously in China, India, and the West, without any one of these regions knowing of the others.
Armstrong gets confused by the claims now that Zoroaster is much earlier and that Lao Tse is later, ca. -300. This doesn’t change anything.
Forget all these prophets and sages for a minute. They are the tips of the iceberg. These clues tell us to study the deeper culture behind them. Then it becomes clear that the question of the Axial Age is that of larger cultural motions, a stupendous fact. The clearest case is that of Greece. If we start with the Dark Age, then the Archaic, then the Classical period, we see that the seminal period is from about -900 to about -600, and then the ‘outflowing’ period begins. Look at the generation just after -600. It is almost like clockwork, and the density of achievement for the next two centuries is stupendous. But if you look closely you can see that the foundations, almost inchoate, were laid in the period before, a very reasonable interpretation. In fact, we can see that the period of the Homeric consolidation of texts is the clue to this earlier period.
Once we understand the Greek case, then the other cases in Israel, India, Rome, and China are swiftly decoded.
Compare then the ‘Israel/Judah’ phenomenon up to the Exile, with the Greek case, then the Indian and Chinese cases. You notice the almost unbelievable fact that at a deep level a cultural transformation is occurring that is isomorphic in each case (but with different content). We can see that by about -400, or a little later, the phenomenon is over.
Thus the question of Lao Tse or Zoroaster is irrelevant.
First as to Lao Tse, I don’t accept this revision anyway. I doubt if there was a Lao tse. But the tradition records one near -600. That it should seem he came later is for an obvious reason.
Look at Greece: Aristotle, in the fourth century. He comes at the end, and is highly visible. But he records his sources, and looks backward to the Pre-Socratics. We know many of these at best from the few quotes of later writers. But we can see that they, not the generation of Plato and Aristotle are the seminal figures of the Axial phenomenon.
Now we understand Lao Tse. He caps the end of the generative phenomenon, in one aspect.
As to Zoroaster, the issue is irrelevant here. Monotheism far predated the Axial period. What we see instead is the crystallization and formalization within the Axial interval of the constructs of new religions, not the absolute origins of their contents.
Armstrong has simply been led astray by the refusal to face the facts of the Axial synchronism effect, a most mysterious phenomenon indeed.
Small wonder the occupants of the Iron Cage don’t even want to know. Ostriches.