In his 1953 work The Origin and Goal of History, Karl Jaspers created one of the more enduring concepts in the study of cross-cultural philosophy: the Axial Age (Achsenzeit). With this concept, Jaspers was pointing to the stunning outpouring of human creativity between 800 and 200 BCE. This was the era of ancient Greek philosophy from the pre-Socratics to the Hellenistic schools; of the Upaniṣads, the Buddha and Mahāvīra in India; and of the great Warring States philosophers in China (Confucius, Laozi, Zhuangzi, Mencius, Mozi, Xunzi, Han Feizi), to whom nearly all discussions of Chinese philosophy return. Somewhat more controversially, Jaspers identified it as the age of Zoroaster and most of the Hebrew prophets.
The arising of the Axial Age is all the more striking because it would appear to be coincidence. Continue reading