Introduction

Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter i
2. Contents vii
3. Introduction 1
4. Fundamental Questions
5. 1 The Axial Age Debate as Religious Discourse 9
6. 2 What Was the Axial Revolution? 30
7. 3 An Evolutionary Approach to Culture 47
8. 4 Embodiment, Transcendence, and Contingency 77
9. 5 The Axial Age in Global History 102
10. 6 The Buddha’s Meditative Trance 126
11. 7 The Idea of Transcendence 146
12. A Comparative Perspective
13. 8 Religion, the Axial Age, and Secular Modernity in Bellah’s Th eory of Religious Evolution 191
14. 9 Where Do Axial Commitments Reside? 222
15. 10 The Axial Age Theory 248
16. Destructive Possibilities?
17. 11 The Axial Conundrum between Transcendental Visions and Vicissitudes of Th eir Institutionalizations 277
18. 12 Axial Religions and the Problem of Violence 294
19. 13 Righ teous Rebels 317
20. Reevaluations
21. 14 Rehistoricizing the Axial Age 337
22. 15 Cultural Memory and the Myth of the Axial Age 366
23. Perspectives on the Future
24. 16 The Axial Invention of Education and Today’s Global Knowledge Culture 411
25. 17 The Future of Transcendence 430
26. 18 The Heritage of the Axial Age 447
27. Bibliography 469
28. Contributors 539
29. Index 543