![[Media/Karl_Jaspers_1946.jpg]] *Karl Jaspers (1883-1969) in 1946* Several times during the previous chapter, I have briefly mentioned a philosophy or a religion and then turned away, promising to return. Well, here we are. I wanted to wait and talk about all these ways of thinking together, both because many of them relate to each other and because there is a long tradition of considering these *particular* philosophical and religious ideas as part of a group. This tradition began in the 19th century but the most famous expression of it is in the idea of the Axial Age, developed by German psychologist and philosopher Karl Jaspers in a 1949 book called *The Origin and Goal of History*. Jaspers began his explanation of the axial age like this (with Wikipedia links): > [Confucius](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confucius "Confucius") and [Lao-Tse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lao-Tse "Lao-Tse") were living in China, all the schools of Chinese philosophy came into being, including those of [Mo Ti](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mo_Ti "Mo Ti"), [Chuang Tse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhuang_Zhou "Zhuang Zhou"), [Lieh Tzu](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lieh_Tzu "Lieh Tzu") and a host of others; India produced the [Upanishads](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upanishads "Upanishads") and [Buddha](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddha "Buddha") and, like China, ran the whole gamut of philosophical possibilities down to [materialism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materialism "Materialism"), [scepticism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scepticism "Scepticism") and [nihilism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nihilism "Nihilism"); in Iran, [Zarathustra](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zarathustra "Zarathustra") taught a challenging view of the world as a struggle between good and evil; in Ancient Israel the prophets made their appearance from [Elijah](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elijah "Elijah") by way of [Isaiah](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaiah "Isaiah") and [Jeremiah](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremiah "Jeremiah") to [Deutero-Isaiah](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutero-Isaiah "Deutero-Isaiah"); Greece witnessed the appearance of [Homer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homer "Homer"), of the philosophers—[Parmenides](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parmenides "Parmenides"), [Heraclitus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heraclitus "Heraclitus") and [Plato](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plato "Plato")—of the tragedians, of [Thucydides](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thucydides "Thucydides") and [Archimedes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archimedes "Archimedes"). Everything implied by these names developed during these few centuries almost simultaneously in China, India and the West. The idea is that there was a "moment" in history that lasted several hundred years, when a lot of the philosophies and religions we think are important were developed, sometimes more or less simultaneously. This claim is really a stretch, but to the extent that some of these ideas do seem to have developed close together in time, it's interesting to look more closely at them and ask why. And in any case, these are some of the foundational philosophical and religious ideas that still influence our lives, so we'll be looking at them anyway. ----- Next: [[6.2 - Zoroastrianism]] Back: [[5.18 - Central America]]