Saturday 25 March 2017

AXIAL AGE NOT NECY SUCCESS

 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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