In the short run they usually failed:
think of Jeremiah, Socrates, Confucius, Jesus. Buddhism fi nally disappeared
in India, the Buddha’s home ground. Jaspers sums it up starkly: “Th e Axial
Period too ended in failure. History went on.” So breakthroughs were not
only preceded by breakdowns, they were followed by breakdowns. History
indeed. Th e insights, however, at least the ones we know of, survived. Th e
very failures that followed them stimulated repeated eff orts to recover the
initial insights, to realize the so far unrealized possibilities. It is this that has
given such dynamism to the axial traditions. But important though these
traditions are to us, and Weil reminds us that any talk of an axial age is culturally
autobiographical— the axial age is axial because of what it has meant
to us— these traditions give us no grounds for triumphalism. Th e failures
have been many and it is hard to gauge the successes. It is hard to say that we
today, particularly today, are living up to the insights of the great axial prophets
and sages. But it is time to take a closer look.
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