Origins and Goal of History

* Book: Karl Jaspers. The Origins and Goal of History. Routledge

URL = https://www.routledge.com/The-Origin-and-Goal-of-History/Jaspers/p/book/9780367679859

Description

“The Origin and Goal of History is a vitally important book. It is renowned for Jaspers' theory of an 'Axial Age', running from the 8th to the 3rd century BCE. Jaspers argues that this period witnessed a remarkable flowering of new ways of thinking that appeared in Persia, India, China and the Greco-Roman world, in striking parallel development but without any obvious direct cultural contact between them. Jaspers identifies key thinkers from this age, including Confucius, Buddha, Zarathustra, Homer and Plato, who had a profound influence on the trajectory of future philosophies and religions. For Jaspers, crucially, it is here that we see the flowering of diverse philosophical beliefs such as scepticism, materialism, sophism, nihilism, and debates about good and evil, which taken together demonstrate human beings' shared ability to engage with universal, humanistic questions as opposed to those mired in nationality or authoritarianism.”

(https://www.routledge.com/The-Origin-and-Goal-of-History/Jaspers/p/book/9780367679859)