Axial revolutions
Bringing reflexivity and transcendence into human civilisation
The New Mindscape #11–1.
Four types of knowledge
The famous sociologist Robert Bellah, in his book Religion and Human Evolution, introduced four modalities of knowing — the unitive, the enactive, the symbolic and the conceptual. According to Bellah, each of these four modalities of knowing appeared at different stages in human evolution.[1]
The unitive modality refers to a sense of oneness and undifferentiation between self, other, and cosmos. If we look at the history of humanity, it would be impossible to know when the unitive modality first appeared. The enactive modality of knowledge refers to knowledge that is enacted ritually, through the body. This type of knowledge probably appeared very early in human societies, even before symbolic knowledge. Bellah’s conclusion is based on the fact that even animals have some kind of enactive rituals. Even before human beings had symbols, it is likely that we were able to communicate and understand the world through the movement of our bodies. According to Bellah, then, ritual is the first thing that came in the history of religion.
Next, symbolic thinking occurred. Cave paintings have been discovered in Lascaux of France and some other places, that were created tens of thousands of years ago. On these paintings, we can see beautiful depictions of wild animals such as buffaloes and horses, as well as hunters. We assume that these paintings have symbolic meanings, although it’s impossible for us to decipher them. We can be sure that the symbolic modality of knowing appeared rather early in the history of humanity. [2] In most of the tribal societies that anthropologists have studied, we can find both enactive and symbolic knowledge together in ritual and mythology. Prior to 800 BC, most human societies probably lived in a form of animistic worldview, using unitive, enactive and symbolic knowledge. They had rituals in which they engaged with other beings in an enactive way. They had all kinds of mythologies in which they told the stories of the tiger, the lion, the sun spirit, the mountain spirit, and so on — using symbolism that they never theorised about.
The ritual and symbolic forms helped humans to survive and reproduce through high levels of group communication and cooperation. Ritual and symbolism played a crucial role in transcending individual self-interest, structuring and facilitating group cooperation, by providing groups with a ritual framework for social life, a source of sacred authority, and common moral norms and identity. Ritual and symbolism acted as the stabilizing glue for what would otherwise be inherently unstable and transient assemblages of individuals.
Then, at a certain point in history, conceptual or theoretical thinking appeared. In Robert Bellah’s scheme of four types of understanding, the fourth modality of understanding is the “conceptual”, which can also be called “rational” or “theoretic”. Here, understanding is based on abstract concepts, logically connected with each other, and described with language. In this modality, thought is also depersonalized; the world is considered from beyond the self, our own self becomes an object of knowledge. Self-reflexivity, self-knowledge and self-criticism appear. This kind of understanding appeared during what is called the “Axial Age”, in the period around 800–200 BC, in different parts of the world, which saw the birth of most of the world’s major religious and philosophical systems including Daoism, Confucianism, Buddhism, Upanishadic Hinduism, Judaism (the root of Christianity and Islam) and Greek philosophy. Each of these “Axial” systems looks at the self from a self-transcending spiritual perspective, although each does so in a different way. Interestingly, for example, Confucius, Laozi, Buddha, and Socrates all lived around the same time, around 500 BC. Later, Jesus and Mohammad set in motion further “axial” transformations.
When the German philosopher Karl Jaspers first coined the term ‘Axial Age’, he described a time of reflexivity and transcendence [3]. During this age, people in different civilisations started to reflect critically and conceptually about transcendence. They criticised the religious values and practices of the societies that they lived in, and proposed something transcendental for the individual and the collective. For the first time, they advocated a “post-conventional” morality.
During the Axial Age, we are able to observe the appearance, the evolution and the decline of two types of transcendence — individual and collective transcendence. Axial figures challenged existing group identities, hierarchies and religio-political structures. They affirmed the vanity of worldly political power, domination and identity, and offered visions of universal love, compassion, justice and brotherhood, transcending boundaries of race, ethnicity, class and caste.[4]
In this essay, I consider these “Axial figures” in their social and historical context, showing how they challenged the existing social and religious structures of their day, how they opened spaces for individual reflexivity and transcendence, and how they created the possibility for transcending local loyalties and for imagining a universal human community.
Moses
The first axial breakthrough may have been with with Moses, who is said to have lived around 1300 BC. That’s earlier than the Axial Age, although the Biblical story of Moses was written down, based on earlier oral tales, during the Axial Age. In that story, Moses split the Red Sea, and freed the Hebrew slaves of Egypt from the pharaoh, the emperor of Egypt. According to the story, the Egyptian pharaohs had enslaved the Hebrews. Moses received a revelation from God, who told him to bring his people to freedom in the Promised Land. God commanded him to take his people out of Egypt into the “land of milk and honey.” Moses replied to God, ‘How am I going to do that? I have nothing. I am just a slave.’ God assured him that he only needed to have faith in God, with which he would be able to overcome the Pharaoh and lead his people to freedom. That’s what he did.
Moses is considered to be one of the leading prophets of Judaism, Christianity, Islam and the Baha’i Faith [6]. What is revolutionary about the story of Moses is that all societies at that time had their own gods — which is called “polytheism”.
In China, for example, even now, each village has its own ‘Earth god’ (Tudi gong 土地公). In the village where I did my research, villagers not only worship their own Earth god, but they also have their own local gods. One of the local gods is called ‘Aunty Cao’ (Caozhu Niangniang 曹主娘娘), who is a goddess worshipped in a few villages in that region. The villagers also worship ‘Pangu Dawang’ 盤古大王, who is a god known all over China; but only in some parts of China do people worship him as one of the most important gods.
The point here is that in a polytheistic society, every place has its specific gods. The god worshipped in one village may not necessarily be worshipped in other villages. In all different polytheistic societies around the world, this is how it works — every tribe, city, and empire has its own local gods. When I went to a tribal area in western Africa some 30 years ago, I spoke to a local man there, who told me, “I envy you for your God, because your God is the God of the whole universe, so that you will not be scared wherever you go. I have my god under my house. In my house, I feel very safe, because I can worship my god who is underground. However, the further I go away from my house, the less safe I feel. If I go travelling on a business trip or go to the market, I start to worry a little. If I go a little further, I worry even more. If I go very far, I’m sure that I will get sick and may even die — because it’s too far for my house god to protect me. So I’m very scared to go very far away from my house. However, your God is everywhere. Wherever you go, he is with you. I have noticed that you people are never scared, as you come so far from your homes, and you don’t seem to be scared of anything at all.”
This is one of the ideas that Moses brought: there is a God, who is not the petty god of only one place, but the God of the whole universe. Thus, it doesn’t matter where you go, God is there, and He can protect you. When God said to Moses, “Leave Egypt, and go to the Promised Land, and I will be with you”, that was unheard of. If you moved to a different place, you’d have to deal with other gods over there. So the God of Abraham and of Moses is a God who transcends all villages, tribes, localities, and empires. This is one of the aspects of collective transcendence expressed by Moses: the people of God, the Hebrews, were tied only to God and not to any specific place.
Another revolutionary idea conveyed by the story of Moses is that this God is actually superior to the Emperor. In Egypt, just like in ancient China, the Pharaoh was himself considered to be a god. The Chinese emperor, at the time, was the ‘Son of Heaven’ (Tianzi). He himself was as powerful as a god — even more so was the Egyptian pharaoh.
In this type of religion, it is considered that the more powerful a person is politically, the greater blessing this person receives from the gods. If a person has a lot of power or money, it means that the gods are blessing this person. He must be blessed — that’s why this person is so powerful or wealthy. Some kind of invisible power is coming to you that is giving you prosperity, happiness, material wealth, social status, and everything like that — these are signs that the gods are on your side.
According to that mind-set, the gods don’t like the poor and the weak. If they are poor, enslaved or weak, it’s because the gods don’t like or care about them — or because their gods are weak. Instead, the gods — or the most powerful gods — are helping and protecting the emperor. That the emperor has great power and wealth, is because he is favoured by the gods, or even because he is a god himself. This is a widespread idea in traditional polytheistic religions around the world.
In the story of Moses, the logic completely changes. The supreme God is actually on the side of the enslaved and the poor, and is against the pharaoh. God says, ‘Even the most powerful emperor in the world is nothing compared to me, the supreme God.’ This God can protect the weak, and can defeat the emperor. The spiritual reality of God transcends any political powers, empires, communities, or social classes. Regardless of being rich or poor, powerful or powerless, people are all the same in front of God.
This is a powerful notion of collective transcendence. Whether or not such a God actually exists, the concept has certainly been incredibly powerful: the thousands of gods of Egypt and Palestine that were worshipped by people in ancient times, as well as the dozens of nations and tribes that worshipped them, have completely disappeared and are forgotten by everyone but archaeologists and historians. But over two thirds of all humans, including all Jews, Christians and Muslims, consider themselves to be followers of the God of Moses.
Moses signalled perhaps one of the earliest appearances of a transcendent type of religion, which was reinforced during the Axial Age with the Hebrew prophets of Israel. The Old Testament contains many stories of these prophets, who are said to have lived around the Eighth Century BC. These prophets, such as Isaiah, were always criticising their society in the name of God. They told people that the way they were doing things was wrong, that they were immoral and corrupt. They even criticised their religious practices, such as the way in which people slaughtered animals to worship God. They criticised people for being hypocritical — they always tried to show off that they were pious, but they were not in their hearts at all. In general, these prophets were critical of the customs, religion and political system of their own society. They criticised the conventional morality of the people. Instead, they emphasised the importance of believing in something else — in the future, people would have a beautiful and peaceful world. For this reason, people should have hope and faith, because God would bring peace and prosperity to humanity. This is another aspect of transcendence, in terms of time — to transcend the misery of the here and now, and instead, to situate yourself in the long vision of history.
Buddha
Around the same time that the Israeli prophets reiterated their vision of divine transcendence to the Hebrew people, Shakyamuni, the Buddha, in India brought the teaching of Buddhism. According to the story, Gautama Buddha was born a prince. A soothsayer had predicted that he would become a holy man. His father, the king, was afraid that he would renounce his throne, and thus provided him with whatever he would possibly want — luxuries, comfort, food, women, etc. — and did not allow him to leave the comfort of his palaces and gardens.
But Shakyamuni burned with curiosity to see the world outside the palace. Once he escaped, and he saw the suffering of the world — illness, ignorance, and death. He was deeply moved by these sufferings, and decided to leave the palace forever to find the source of the suffering of the world. First, he tried many ascetic practices, which were common in India at that time, as methods to attain spiritual detachment. For example, he hardly ate anything for months, and inflicted pain on himself. But those practices led him nowhere. Hence, he decided to give up on these ascetic practices of self-mortification, and to meditate under a tree until he could discover the truth about the reason for the existence of suffering. The story goes that he achieved enlightenment under the tree. He finally understood the truth of the reason for suffering, the truth of the whole universe, and the path of deliverance from suffering.
Shakyamuni taught that human suffering was the result of attachment to the things of this world. We want things, and thus suffer from not getting them. But we also suffer when we get what we want, because what we have obtained will not last forever, or we now want something else. All the time, we are tormented by our desire, and we suffer as a result. The Buddha taught that the solution to the problem of suffering is that we have to let go of our desires. Our ego — our attachment to our own selves — is the key thing that we should let go of. Basically, the Buddha talked about transcendence from the self and the practices of the society in which we live. We should transcend ourselves from the desire for luxury, wealth, and high social status.
The Buddha also criticised the religious practices of his day. He taught that popular religious practices of his time such as pain-inflicting self-mortification, were unnecessary. His teachings also implied that the rituals, and even the social and political systems of his day, were of no value, simply the product of peoples’ worldly desires for money, status and power. In a sense, the Buddha radically challenged the conventional morality of his day.
Confucius
In China, Confucius lived around the same time as the Buddha. He also challenged conventional morality. He criticised many of the rituals and customs of his day, that were based on self-interest. He advocated that everybody could become a gentleman, through following moral and ethical principles. He was very critical of the way in which people conducted ritual. Therefore, he talked a lot about rituals, conventions, and etiquette — the so-called li 禮.
In the Chinese society of his day, people conducted all kinds of rituals and sacrifices for worshipping gods. Confucius felt, however, that the moral development of the people was very low. People were selfish and petty. He tried to make people transcend their selfish interests, and consider the interest of the whole world. He urged people to give a higher and noble meaning to the customs, conventions and rituals. So, from the perspective of post-conventional morality, Confucius was very critical of different religious practices of his day.
Many people consider that Confucius was not a religious man, but I disagree. Confucius still believed that people should worship heaven and the ancestors. He just opposed people being obsessed with spirits, ghosts and things like that. What was more important for him was the moral transformation at a personal and social level that could be effected through rites conducted in the proper spirit. So Confucius wanted to transform the customs and religious practices of his day. That people should transform their hearts and elevate their visions to cover the whole world. This is the type of transcendence that Confucius was talking about.
Jesus and Mohammad
Jesus Christ, 500 years later, also brought a new form of transcendence, through universal love derived from the love of God for all His creatures. Through this principle, he challenged the conventional social divisions of the Jewish people of his day. He showed love to beggars and prostitutes. He even showed love to tax collectors, who were the most hated people at that time. According to conventional morality, beggars, prostitutes and tax collectors were the most despicable and morally reprehensible people in the world; and no good person should be friends with them. But for Jesus, all people are the children of God, regardless of their social status. Thus he showed universal love to everybody, and transcended all social divisions.
Jesus also criticised the religious practices of his day. He found that people were too proud of their ceremonies and rituals, and were practising the outward form and laws of their religion. They had lost the true spirit of their religion. So Jesus deliberately broke some of the religious laws, such as the law of Sabbath. According to the book of Exodus, it is commanded by God to be kept as a holy day of rest, in the same way that God had rested after the seventh day of creation. But Jesus broke the law of Sabbath, which shocked the priests and religious leaders of his day. It was because Jesus broke the conventional morality that they persuaded the Roman governor of Palestine to crucify him.
Another 600 years later, Muhammad appeared in Arabia. He also preached a teaching of transcendence. The Arabian people, at the time of Muhammad, worshipped their own tribal and clan gods. Muhammad said that above these gods, there is one great God, who will dispense justice to everyone. Everyone is equal before this great God. He asked people to self-examine themselves all the time, and to imagine themselves facing the judgement of God. No matter their race, their tribe, their nation or their social status, the judgement of God would apply equally to them. Through the teachings of Muhammad, these tribes in Arabia transcended their divisions, and became a large and rapidly growing civilisation.
Axial transcendence
Most of the figures I have just discussed lived in the period called the Axial Age. Now, some scholars have said we should talk more about Axial Revolutions or Axial Moments, because figures like Jesus and Muhammad lived centuries after the so-called Axial Age. But no matter when they lived, these figures all introduced, in a different way, the notion of reflexivity, which means we should look into ourselves and judge our motivations and actions in relation to a transcendental principle, rather than blindly follow the customs of the society that we live in. This self-reflexivity is one of the core dimensions of spirituality.
Prior to the Axial Age, it would have been hard to talk about something called “spirituality”, because religion was primarily concerned with conducting the proper rituals and conforming to the social norms — doing what is expected of you and following the social conventions; there wasn’t much idea of stepping back from them and looking critically at social conventions and at oneself. All of these figures — the prophets of Israel, the Buddha, Confucius, Jesus and Muhammad –all of them introduced new religious teachings; they were religious revolutionaries. They told people to step back from their current society and religious practices, so as to look into and eventually transcend their own self. They also told people to transcend their social groups — to think beyond their own tribes or countries — and to think of the wellness of the whole world under God, Heaven, or the Dharma.
These figures broke with the religious traditions of their time, and out of their lives and teachings, new religious traditions gradually came into being. Buddhism emerged out of the teachings of the Buddha. Christianity emerged out of the life and teachings of Jesus. Islam emerged out of the new laws revealed by Muhammad in the Qur’an. The entire Western philosophical tradition emerged out of Socrates. In a sense, a core component of the Chinese religious and philosophical tradition emerged out of the teachings of Confucius. All of these figures were the origins of new traditions.[6]
These Axial figures thus introduced innovation, reflexivity and even a critical view of the world around them. Because they did that, they started a process of disenchantment, which I talked about a few weeks ago. It’s ironic that to some degree, disenchantment was set in motion by the founders of the great world religions
In the animist worldview that we talked about a few weeks ago, everything is alive, and has its own consciousness or agency. Therefore, we always have to relate to these beings — to communicate or to have relationships with them. But then, the God of Moses, Jesus and Muhammad says, ‘God is supreme — don’t worship other things in nature. They are nothing but God’s creatures.’ The Buddha says, ‘Never mind those things, because they are nothing. Don’t be attached to all these beings. They are just as ephemeral and transitory as you are. Transcend all of that.’ Confucius says, ‘Don’t be obsessed with all these spirits, ghosts and so on.’ In this sense, these Axial figures all started the process of disenchantment, of being critical of all the powers, beliefs and customs of the world. Their teachings contain the seed of reflexivity and criticism of enchanted worldviews.
But weren’t they living in an enchanted world of their own? Yes, absolutely. They lived in a transcendental enchantment. What these Axial figures taught was to connect with a transcendental spiritual reality — something that is far beyond what we can imagine in the world that we live in today. They wanted to draw people into a connection with the supreme God, Dao, Heaven or Dharma, which is higher than the lesser idols, gods or ghosts of their locality. In a sense, the enchanted reality that they talked about was a transcendental one. They tried to bring humanity to a higher level of transcendence. By doing that, they also led humanity to a certain type of critical and reflexive detachment from the things of this world, including many popular beliefs and religious practices.
[1] Robert Bellah, Religion and Human Evolution, from the Paleolithic to the Axial Age, Harvard University Press, 2011.
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Mithen, S. 1999. Symbolism and the supernatural. In: The Evolution of Culture (eds. R. Dunbar, C. Knight & C. Power): 147–169. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Rappaport, R. A. 1999. Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
[3] Karl Jaspers, The Origin and Goal of History, 1949.
[4] Eisenstadt, Shmuel N. “The Axial Age: the Emergence of Transcendental Visions and the Rise of Clerics.” European Journal of Sociology / Archives Européennes De Sociologie 23, no. 2 (1982): 294–314. doi:10.1017/S0003975600003908.
[5] Armstrong, Karen. A history of God: The 4,000-year quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Ballantine Books, 2011.
[6] Armstrong, Karen. The great transformation: The beginning of our religious traditions. Anchor, 2006.
Duara, Prasenjit. The crisis of global modernity: Asian Traditions and a Sustainable World. Cambridge University Press, 2015.
This essay and the New Mindscape Medium series are brought to you by the University of Hong Kong’s Common Core Curriculum Course CCHU9014 Spirituality, Religion and Social Change, with the support of the Asian Religious Connections research cluster of the Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences.
