448 a note on the three orientationsTh e contrast between my view and the assumptions of the Axial Age
discourse can be stated at three levels: (1) the motivations and inten-
tions of that discourse and of mine in their respective approaches to the
history of religion and of philosophy; (2) the content of the transforma-
tion that was brought about by the spiritual innovations addressed in
these two distinct discourses; (3) the claims that these contrasting ac-
counts make about the social and cultural contexts that were hospitable
or inimical to the innovations that they emphasize.
- Motivations and Intentions. Jaspers’s pre sen ta tion of the idea of the
Axial Age was explicitly driven by a philosophical and po liti cal concern.
In On the Origins and Goal of History, as in much of his work, Jaspers
sought to split the diff erence between rationalism and historicism— or,
more precisely, to fi nd a way of reckoning with the diversity of religious
and philosophical traditions that would resist the fall into a historiciz-
ing relativism. Th e historical claims, albeit in de pen dently defended,
were secondary to this program. In the subsequent literature that has
taken off from Jaspers’s conception, the situation has been reversed. A
par tic u lar family of views about the history of certain beliefs and of
their relation to the history of society is now in the forefront. Th e philo-
sophical and po liti cal intention has become largely implicit. From time
to time, it comes into the open.
Th e key to understanding the thesis of the Axial transformation is
the connection that it tried to establish between the turn to transcen-
dence, most explicitly affi rmed in the radical mono the ism of the Jews,
and the emergence of speculative and critical thought. Athens and Je-
rusalem were united in this thesis, as they were in many of the attempts
of the Eu ro pe an intelligentsia to invent a coherent and reassuring gene-
alogy for itself.
Th e fl owering of philosophy from the Ionian pre- Socratics to Plato
and Aristotle played a star role in the Axial Age notion. Th e speculative
metaphysics of ancient India could be made to join this parade, with
Buddhism represented as a culminating expression of this achieve-
ment. In pre- imperial and early imperial China, Taoism could easily be
enlisted in the same cause, but early Confucianism was an uncomfort-
able presence because of its relentlessly anti- metaphysical and even
anti- speculative stance. Christianity as well as Islam remained far out-