In the philosophy of history, the concept of “axial time” appeared thanks to the thinker Karl Jaspers. Analyzing the progress of human society, pondering the emergence and death of ancient civilizations, the famous historian tried to determine what gave rise to modern civilization and the mentality of people. As a result, he came up with the idea that there was a period (lasting about six hundred years) that could be called the axis of world history.
Jaspers believed that this phase lasted from the eighth to the second century BC. Why didn’t the first centuries of our calendar serve as a starting point, because the chronology system itself, adopted in the modern Western world, is based on the date of the birth of Christ? Jaspers argues that axial time is a universal category that cannot be tied to a single religion, even if it is world-wide. The dogma of faith should not be the dominant criterion for empirical comprehension of the history of mankind. And the creation of being and the “end of time,” as they are described in Genesis and the Apocalypse, even a believing Christian separates in meaning from the secular history of society.
Before axial time came, humanity knew two key cuts in its history. The first is the appearance of articulate speech, the manufacture of tools, the ability to use fire. The second section is the V-III millennium
BC, when in a favorable climate and in the channels of large rivers ancient civilizations arise: Egypt, Babylon, Assyria, China, India. At this time, writing appears, the state, mythological religious treatises are created, there is trade, and, consequently, the clash and interpenetration of cultures. The ancient kingdoms set the stage for the axis of world history.
In the 700s BC, “axial time” itself sets in. It especially manifested itself in the 4th century BC. Jaspers calls this section "the spiritual foundation of mankind." Almost simultaneously, Lao Tzu, Confucius, and other great thinkers who create the foundations of Confucianism, Taoism, Legism, and Moism live and work in China. In India, the Buddha proclaims his Benares sermon, the Upanishads are written. Zarathustra teaches about the struggle between good and evil in Iran. In Palestine, this era was marked by the appearance of the prophets Isaiah, Elijah and Jerome. In Greece, there are all philosophical movements - from materialism and skepticism to highly sophisticated sophistry. Then Socrates, Aristotle and Plato, Heraclitus and Parmenides lived.
This axial time, according to Jaspers, is the most important in the history of society. It was then that there was a sharp turn that created modern man, his attitude, individualism and rationality. In distant lands, at different ends of Eurasia, but almost simultaneously, people realize the value of the individual and the individual, their own helplessness in the face of a soulless environment. The desire for the transcendental, that "beyond the world", has affected the mentality of people more than the invention of the plow and the water mill.
Axial time has given rise to the foundations of all existing world religions. The “time of mercy” in Christianity took place two centuries later, but the moral of the people was ready to accept the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount. Buddha lived in the fourth century BC, but widespread Buddhism also occurred a few centuries later. According to Jaspers, the modern era is now developing and finalizing those ideas whose foundations were laid precisely in that key period. Logic, methods of cognition of the world, philosophical views and attitude of a person of that time are surprisingly in tune with ours.