a note on the three orientations 447also and above all an affi rmation of the power of thought to make sense
of the established order of the world as a whole and to pass judgment
on it. For thought to pass judgment on the world, it had fi rst, according
to the defenders of the conception of the Axial Age, to assess its own
presuppositions and procedures: it had to become refl exive.
Th e relatively simultaneous emergence of these ideas in Eu rope, In-
dia, and China took place in the setting of social events that brought
civilizations into oft en violent contact with one another. Th ese events
also opened space for intellectual and spiritual authorities who could
hold the wielders of temporal power to account in the name of a higher
standard.
A controversy between believers in this comparative- historical con-
ception and doubters has ensued. Th e skeptics, oft en specialists in the
study of a par tic u lar civilization, have usually dissented from the ap-
plication of the Axial Age thesis to one or another religion. Th ey have
oft en done so, however, from a position of sympathy with the larger
objectives of the Axial Age discourse, which I discuss below. Th ey oft en
share with the believers attitudes and assumptions that confl ict with
the approach taken in this book to religious divergence in history.*
I now explain how and why the comparative- historical aspect of my
argument (and it is no more than an aspect) diff ers from the assump-
tions of many of these writings. My view is closer in spirit to Hegel (in
his Lectures on the History of Religion); to eighteenth-, nineteenth-, and
twentieth- century comparativists, from Anquetil- Duperron to Georges
Dumézil; and to Arnold Toynbee’s treatment of the world religions in
the later parts of A Study of History. To prevent misunderstanding, I
have therefore avoided in this work the use of the terms Axial Age and
Axial Age breakthroughs.
* A growing literature, mostly in German and in En glish, has developed in recent de-
cades taking the Axial Age thesis as its centerpiece. Th ere are three milestones in the
development of this literature. Th e fi rst is the Daedalus issue, edited by Benjamin
Schwartz, “Wisdom, Revelation and Doubt: Perspectives on the First Millennium,
b.c.,” 1975. Th e second consists of writings of Shmuel N. Eisenstadt and of his associ-
ates, Th e Origins and Diversity of Axial Age Civilizations, edited by Eisenstadt and
published in 1986, and the subsequent volumes published from 1987 to 1992 under
the general title Kulturen der Achsenzeit. Th e third is presented in the volume edited
by Robert Bellah and Hans Joas, Th e Axial Age and Its Consequences, 2012.