The year 500 B.C. was a miraculous year, when Eastern and Western civilizations saw a philosophical explosion at the same time. Historically, this was a major turning point in human civilization, with the Spring and Autumn Period in China, and the ancient Indian Buddhism and ancient Greek philosophy in the Eastern Hemisphere, each leading human civilization to a new dimension.
Perhaps you are not very clear about the time dimension of the sages of the Axial Age, but we can compare them in another way.
Born in 571 BC, Lao Tzu was one year older than the Islamic prophet Muhammad, and twenty years later Confucius was born, about eight years old, when the Buddha Shakyamuni attained Nirvana. Mozi, who was always working against Confucius, was seven years older than Socrates, the founder of Western philosophy, and Plato was forty-two years younger than his teacher. Plato's pupil Aristotle, who was twelve years older than Mencius and fifteen years older than Zhuangzi. Archimedes, the father of mechanics in the West, an encyclopedic scientist and philosopher, is of the same age as Han Feizi, and the difference between the two is ...... seven years oldThese philosophers lived in a period of about 400 years, and these 400 years have determined the direction of the development of Eastern and Western civilizations for 2,500 years, and have shaped our worldview and values to this day.
Therefore, later generations have called these 400 years the "Axial Age" of human civilization.
Wen Yiduo once vividly described this era in "The Historical Trends of Literature": "Human beings have stumbled for tens of thousands of years in the process of evolution, and suddenly the four ancient peoples that have had the greatest and deepest influence on modern civilization - China, India, Israel, and Greece - all raised their heads at about the same time and took great strides. It was as if all of a sudden, the spiritual consciousness of human beings in different corners of the earth suddenly awakened together. Therefore, the German philosopher Karl Yaspers, in his book "The Origin and Goal of History", gave this "starry" era a resounding name "Axial Age".
The "Axial Age" was characterized by a diversity of culture and thought. Generally speaking, the uneven laws of historical development are the norm, so the concentrated explosion of multiple civilizations in the "Axial Age" seems a bit unusual.
The historian Toynbee believes that civilization is born because of environmental challenges that cause people to face each other, and in the cycle of challenges and responses, civilization is born because of this. Spiritual activity stems from the way of getting rid of fear, so the Roman man Lulecius said: "The first mother of the gods in fear, especially the fear of death." ”
Therefore, the fear of death gave rise to religious beliefs, and the emergence of disasters and crises made people's primitive religions more and more ignorant and cruel, and this was the state of human civilization before entering the Axial Age.
With the advent of the Axial Age, the sages began to abandon the search for divinity in favor of the human self. And this is a breakthrough in the pure sensibility of primitive religion, and the beginning of a new wisdom of civilization in a rational and moral way.
In various regions of the Axial Age, people began to seek a rational way to build a better society.
In the world of great controversy in China, several generations of philosophers and scholars have written books and theories, constructing a grand occasion of a hundred schools of thought, Confucius's "benevolence, loyalty, forgiveness", Mozi's "concurrent love" has made Chinese civilization more humane.
The prophets of the Middle East turned their thinking to the inner world and proposed ways to avoid violence and face suffering, while creativity affirmed the spiritual belief in the divinity of life.
Shakyamuni in India discovered the hidden state of "self-forgetfulness" in every human being, and developed a spiritual method to liberate people who are suffering, and sought intermediate liberation and happiness, thus forming a far-reaching Buddhism.
The Greeks, on the other hand, reflected on war through tragedy and sought enlightenment of wisdom through rational thinking and science.
Although the peoples of the various axial ages did not follow the same path, but developed along their own trajectories. But in the end, the common theme of all civilizations in the "Axial Age" was a universal concern for reason, compassion, and respect. It is believed that in order to curb cruelty and self-transformation, it is necessary to seek the sublimation of human nature from self-restraint and transformation.
And it is precisely when human beings really face the suffering of life and death that wisdom arises.
Therefore, the Axial Age is an era in which human beings collectively produce wisdom in the face of the ultimate suffering of life and death.