The Origins and Diversity of Axial Age Civilizations

The Origins and Diversity of Axial Age Civilizations PDF Author: Shmuel N. Eisenstadt
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438401949
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 572

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Book Description
This book presents a new and original analysis of the great ancient civilizations, focusing on the breakthroughs and their institutionalization in Greece, Israel, China, and India. The conditions under which these civilizations developed are systematically explored. For comparative purposes, the civilization of Assyria, where such a breakthrough did not take place is analyzed. Attention is given to the transformation of modes of thought and symbolism. Special focus is brought to the development of the great religions and the perception of tension between the transcendental and mundane orders and between rulers and other elites.

The Origins and Diversity of Axial Age Civilizations

The Origins and Diversity of Axial Age Civilizations PDF Author: Shmuel N. Eisenstadt
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438401949
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 572

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Book Description
This book presents a new and original analysis of the great ancient civilizations, focusing on the breakthroughs and their institutionalization in Greece, Israel, China, and India. The conditions under which these civilizations developed are systematically explored. For comparative purposes, the civilization of Assyria, where such a breakthrough did not take place is analyzed. Attention is given to the transformation of modes of thought and symbolism. Special focus is brought to the development of the great religions and the perception of tension between the transcendental and mundane orders and between rulers and other elites.

The Origins and Diversity of Axial Age Civilizations

The Origins and Diversity of Axial Age Civilizations PDF Author: Shmuel Noah Eisenstadt
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780887060946
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 568

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Book Description
This book presents a new and original analysis of the great ancient civilizations, focusing on the breakthroughs and their institutionalization in Greece, Israel, China, and India. The conditions under which these civilizations developed are systematically explored. For comparative purposes, the civilization of Assyria, where such a breakthrough did not take place is analyzed. Attention is given to the transformation of modes of thought and symbolism. Special focus is brought to the development of the great religions and the perception of tension between the transcendental and mundane orders and between rulers and other elites.

The Origins and Diversity of Axial Age Civilizations

The Origins and Diversity of Axial Age Civilizations PDF Author: Shmuel N. Eisenstadt
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780887060960
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 600

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Book Description
This book presents a new and original analysis of the great ancient civilizations, focusing on the breakthroughs and their institutionalization in Greece, Israel, China, and India. The conditions under which these civilizations developed are systematically explored. For comparative purposes, the civilization of Assyria, where such a breakthrough did not take place is analyzed.

The Axial Age and Its Consequences

The Axial Age and Its Consequences PDF Author: Robert N. Bellah
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674067401
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 561

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Book Description
This book makes the bold claim that intellectual sophistication was born worldwide during the middle centuries of the first millennium bce. From Axial Age thinkers we inherited a sense of the world as a place not just to experience but to investigate, envision, and alter. A variety of utopian visions emerged and led to both reform and repression.

Axial Civilizations And World History

Axial Civilizations And World History PDF Author: J©đhann P©Łll © rnason
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004139559
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 586

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Book Description
A collection of essays by social theorists, historical sociologists and area specialists in classical, biblical and Asian studies. The contributions deal with cultural transformations in major civilizational centres during the "Axial Age," the middle centuries of the last millennium BCE, and their long-term consequences.

Practicing Transcendence

Practicing Transcendence PDF Author: Christopher Peet
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3030144321
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 357

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Book Description
This book introduces readers to the concept of the Axial Age and its relevance for a world in crisis. Scholars have become increasingly interested in philosopher Karl Jaspers’ thesis that a spiritual revolution in consciousness during the first millennium BCE decisively shaped world history. Axial ideas of transcendence develop into ideologies for world religions and civilizations, in turn coalescing into a Eurasian world-system that spreads globally to become the foundation of our contemporary world. Alongside ideas and ideologies, the Axial Age also taught spiritual practices critically resisting the new scale of civilizational power: in small counter-cultural communities on the margins of society, they turn our conscious focus inward to transform ourselves and overcome the destructive potentials within human nature. Axial spiritualities offer humanity a practical wisdom, a profound psychology, and deep hope: to transform despair into resilience, helping us face with courage the ecological and political challenges confronting us today.

Religious Evolution and the Axial Age

Religious Evolution and the Axial Age PDF Author: Stephen K. Sanderson
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350047449
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 317

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Book Description
Religious Evolution and the Axial Age describes and explains the evolution of religion over the past ten millennia. It shows that an overall evolutionary sequence can be observed, running from the spirit and shaman dominated religions of small-scale societies, to the archaic religions of the ancient civilizations, and then to the salvation religions of the Axial Age. Stephen K. Sanderson draws on ideas from new cognitive and evolutionary psychological theories, as well as comparative religion, anthropology, history, and sociology. He argues that religion is a biological adaptation that evolved in order to solve a number of human problems, especially those concerned with existential anxiety and ontological insecurity. Much of the focus of the book is on the Axial Age, the period in the second half of the first millennium BCE that marked the greatest religious transformation in world history. The book demonstrates that, as a result of massive increases in the scale and scope of war and large-scale urbanization, the problems of existential anxiety and ontological insecurity became particularly acute. These changes evoked new religious needs, especially for salvation and release from suffering. As a result entirely new religions-Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Daoism-arose to help people cope with the demands of the new historical era.

From World Religions to Axial Civilizations and Beyond

From World Religions to Axial Civilizations and Beyond PDF Author: Saïd Amir Arjomand
Publisher: SUNY series, Pangaea II: Global/Local Studies
ISBN: 9781438483399
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
The post-World War II idea of the Axial Age by Karl Jaspers, and as elaborated into the sociology of axial civilizations by S. N. Eisenstadt in the later twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, continues to be the subject of intense scholarly debate. Examples of this can be found in recent works of Hans Joas and Jürgen Habermas. In From World Religions to Axial Civilizations and Beyond, an internationally distinguished group of scholars discuss, advance, and criticize the Jaspers-Eisenstadt thesis, and go beyond it by bringing in the critical influence of Max Weber's sociology of world religions and by exploring intercivilizational encounters in key world regions. The essays within this volume are of unusual interest for their original analysis of relatively neglected civilizational zones, especially Islam and the Islamicate civilization and the Byzantine civilization, and its continuation in Orthodox Russia.

Jewish Civilization

Jewish Civilization PDF Author: Shmuel N. Eisenstadt
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438401930
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 325

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Book Description
This book explains why the best way to understand the Jewish historical experience is to look at Jewish people, not just as a religious or ethnic group or a nation or "people," but, as bearers of civilization. This approach helps to explain the greatest riddle of Jewish civilization, namely, its continuity despite destruction, exile, and loss of political independence. In the first part of the book, Eisenstadt compares Jewish life and religious orientations and practices with Hellenistic and Roman civilizations, as well as with Christian and Islamic civilizations. In the second part of the book, he analyzes the modern period with its different patterns of incorporation of Jewish communities into European and American societies; national movements that developed among Jews toward the end of the nineteenth century, especially the Zionist movement; and specific characteristics of Israeli society. The major question Eisenstadt poses is to what extent the characteristics of the Jewish experience are distinctive, in comparison to other ethnic and religious minorities incorporated into modern nation-states, or other revolutionary ideological settler societies. He demonstrates through his case studies the continuous creativity of Jewish civilization.

The Oxford Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology and Religion

The Oxford Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology and Religion PDF Author: James R. Liddle
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199397740
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 399

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Book Description
Résumé : This handbook is currently in development, with individual articles publishing online in advance of print publication. At this time, we cannot add information about unpublished articles in this handbook, however the table of contents will continue to grow as additional articles pass through the review process and are added to the site. Please note that the online publication date for this handbook is the date that the first article in the title was published online. For more information, please read the site FAQs.