Regional study: Athens in the fifth centurybce

Abstract

In the course of the last half-century the interpretation of the first millennium BCE has come to occupy a prominent position not only in the fields of history and the history of religion but, increasingly, also in the humanities and social sciences more generally. One focal point in this development is the growing interest in the idea of the so-called Axial Age. The authors of conceptual historical essays on the Axial Age, Johann P. Arnason and Hans Joas, have somewhat different assessments of the relevance of these references. In all areas where the new openness of thought characteristic of the Axial Age emerged, there were multiple competing conceptualizations and a variety of different schools of thought. Inspired by the evolutionary and cognitive perspective of Merlin Donald, Bellah emphasizes that the Axial Age is expressive of the possibilities that opened up to humankind at the time of the emergence of a fourth evolutionary stage in the development of human culture.