Term
Axial Age
used in 39 texts across the archive
“The Axial Age acquisitions, then, restart history by creating centers outside of the imperial one. The Axial Age acquisitions—Greek philosophy, prophetic Judaism and Christianity and even, I think (but probably less so), Chinese philosophy, are both anti-imperial and imperial. They construct a position from which the existing emperor falls short in God’s eyes, which is to say they institute a kind of permanent resentment towards empire; while at the same time imagine an eternal and universal empire under a true, divinely ordained king.”
In use
“At the heart of the Axial Age are the antinomies of the juridical, which take the form of the possibility of an injustice beyond remedy within the justice system.”
“My argument here is that the Axial Age is the ongoing testing and examination of this kind of hypothetical case which was, in fact, most closely realized in the cases of Socrates and Jesus.”
“The Axial Age acquisitions, then, restart history by creating centers outside of the imperial one.”
Key texts