Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 July 2009
In the first millennium before the Christian era a revolution took place in the realm of ideas and their institutional base which had irreversible effects on several major civilizations and on human history in general. The revolution or series of revolutions, which are related to Karl Jaspers' ‘Axial Age’, have to do with the emergence, conceptualization and institutionalization of a basic tension between the transcendental and mundane orders. This revolutionary process took place in several major civilizations including Ancient Israel, Ancient Greece, early Christianity, Zoroastrian Iran, early Imperial China and in the Hindu and Buddhist civilizations. Although beyond the axial age proper, it also took place in Islam.
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* The analysis presented here, which constitutes part of a larger work on a sociological analysis of comparative civilizations, has been developed in lectures and seminars over the years at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Harvard University and in seminars in the summer 1980 at the Universities of Vienna and Berne. I am indebted to my colleagues and students in these institutions for continuous discussions. The research on which it has been based has been partially supported by a grant from the Volkswagen Foundation.
(25) For some preliminary attempts in such a direction see: S.N. Eisenstadt, Revolution and the Transformation of Societies, op. cit.; Id. Cultural traditions and political dynamics, loc. cit.; Id. Max Weber's Antike Judentum und der Charakter der Jüdisch Zivilisation, in W. Schluchter (ed.), Max Webers Studies über das antike Judentum (Frankfurt, Suhrkamp, 1981), pp. 134–185; and This Worldly Transcendentalism and the Structuring of the World— Max Weber's Religion of China and the format of Chinese history and civilization (forthcoming).