Second Axial Age
Characteristics
Concrete Universality
Sean Kelly:
"In contrast to the abstract universals that dominated the first Axial traditions, the new Gaian identity exemplifies the real-ideal of concrete universality. The universality of Gaia consists most obviously in the fact that it is in and through Gaia that we live and have our being. Gaia is the ground of what we all share in common. For the same reason, this universality is concrete, to begin with, in the sense that the physical systems studied by Earth System science constitute the shared, living body of the entire Earth community. It is also concrete, however, in the specifically Hegelian sense that it, or She, is auto-poietic or self-organizing (the foundational insight of James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis’ Gaia Theory), which is to say that Gaia is a Subject (as well as a communion of subjects, and not a mere collection of objects).
The actualization of concrete universality that I see as the guiding spirit of the Second Axial Age will depend upon the successful coordination of multiple initiatives, both theoretical and practical, across the full spectrum of human endeavor. Here I will focus on some key features of the theoretical.
If the First Axial Age was associated with the emergence of theoretic culture, with its second-order thinking, metacognition, and radical mytho-speculation, the Second Axial Age is marked by what could be described as third-order metacognition and a new (planetary) radical mytho-speculation.
Integrating the critical, reflexive virtues of first-Axial theoretic culture, the leading edge of theory in the Second Axial Age recognizes the destructive potential of the disembedded, disengaged subject (which reduces the world to a mere collection of objects). It re-embeds the human subject into the living Earth and cosmos — or rather renews consciousness of the fact, and mystery, of its ontological consubstantiality with Earth and cosmos — which are now seen, celebrated, and engaged with as a communion of subjects. More radically, we can say that the radiating center of the second Axial Age is constituted by an awareness — a third-order metacognition — in a growing network of individuals and communities, that ‘We live in that time when Earth itself begins its adventure of conscious self-awareness’.
This awareness is informed and catalyzed by many distinct, if overlapping, disciplines, including Earth System science, Big History, the various strands of ecological science and environmental studies, the field of religion and ecology, and the emerging transdiscipline of integral ecology. For our purposes, I would single out the generative contributions of Thomas Berry, one of the founders of integral ecology and, along with Brian Swimme, Mary Evelyn Tucker, and others, bard or prophet of a more coherent and inspiring Big, or better, Deep History."
(https://books.openbookpublishers.com/10.11647/obp.0186.18.pdf)
History
Sean Kelly:
While the idea of a Second Axial Age seems originally to have been proposed by Thomas Berry, the first extended treatment in print was by Ewert Cousins, who summarized his understanding as follows:
- Having developed self-reflective, analytic, critical consciousness in the First Axial Period, we must now, while retaining these values, reappropriate and integrate into that consciousness the collective and cosmic dimensions of the pre-Axial consciousness. We must recapture the unity of tribal consciousness by seeing humanity as a single tribe. And we must see this single tribe related organically to the total cosmos. This means that the consciousness of the twenty-first-century will be global from two perspectives: (1) from a horizontal perspective, cultures and religions are meeting each other on the surface of the globe, entering into creative encounters that will produce a complexified collective consciousness; (2) from a vertical perspective, they must plunge their roots deep into the earth in order to provide a stable and secure base for future development. This new global consciousness must be organically ecological, supported by structures that will ensure justice and peace. In the Second Axial Period this twofold global consciousness is not only a creative possibility to enhance the twenty-first century; it is an absolute necessity if we are to survive."
Discussion
The Second Axial Age is an Age of Commons
James Quilligan:
'The first Axial Age led to the inclusive expression of common being through religion, the arts and culture. But it also resulted in the divisive rationality of privatization, property enclosures and utilitarian economics. If a new Axial Age is now dawning, a synthesis must emerge from the unity and division of the past. This new union can emerge only through a new expression of value. Yet we don’t have to cast about looking for it: this value is already here, needing only to be named, understood and practiced. The commons may now be seen, at least in part, as a rediscovery of the principles of freedom and equality which are idealized but imperfectly expressed through modern free markets and state-enforced justice. Unlike the Market State, however, the commons cannot be coordinated by some ultimate authority exercising control through a unified command structure. The commons are a third dynamic—arising from the shared values and meanings of people’s life-experiences—which includes but transcends the market and state."
The Differences between the First Axial Age and the Second Axial Age
Sean Kelly:
The dominant strands of first Axial traditions tended to emphasize the transcendent pole in the vertical dimension (as we see in Platonic and the later Cartesian dualisms; Christian otherworldliness; Hindu and Buddhist views of the ‘wheel of life’ as illusion or trap; in Chinese cosmology, the immovable Pole star as symbol of Heavenly power and virtue, or the Daoist immortals). In the extreme, according to Robert Bellah, these dominant strands involved ‘the religious rejection of the world characterized by an extremely negative evaluation of man and society and the exaltation of another realm of reality as alone true and infinitely valuable’.
At the same time, while the first Axial Age
involved a new consciousness of the universal in its noetic, cosmic,
and ethical dimensions, the several axial epiphanies of the universal
remained rooted in the exclusive (ethno-linguistic) particularities of
their respective culture spheres, and therefore in both of these senses
the universal was abstract. ‘Great as the major figures of the axial age
were’, as Bellah would note in his last and greatest work,
- and universalistic as their ethics tended to be, we cannot forget that each of them considered his own teaching to be the only truth or the highest truth, even such a figure as the Buddha, who never denounced his rivals but only subtly satirized them. Plato, Confucius, Second Isaiah, all thought that it was they and they alone who had found the final truth. This we can understand as an inevitable feature of the world so long ago.
A central task of the Second Axial Age, by contrast, involves the
articulation of new forms of universality which could mediate between
the particular culture spheres and help them confront their shared
predicament: the threat of planet-wide ecological and civilizational
collapse.
Despite the astounding synchronicity of first Axial Age, it was not global or planetary in extent, and its various representatives were largely unconscious of the parallel developments outside of their own culture spheres. At the same time, however — and as I have argued in detail in Coming Home — it was the destiny of one late, hybrid, shoot (Christianity) of this first axial mutation to become the symbolic catalyst or lure for the eventual emergence, some fifteen hundred years later, of the Planetary Era (more commonly designated as the modern period). It is with this specific genealogical line that we can discern an answer to the question of the relation between the two Axial Ages: the central symbols of Incarnation (of Spirit into matter, of the Logos into Cosmos, of the eternal into time) and of God as Trinity (the Absolute as internally differentiated) prefigure the deep structure of the movement from the first to the second Axial Age, with Modernity as the middle term between both Ages.
The first Axial Age sets up the conditions of possibility for the eventual emergence of the second. These conditions include the reflexive and critical consciousness associated with ‘metacognition/theoretic culture’ (M. Donald); the ‘disembedding’ (Charles Taylor) of culture from the cosmos and of the individual from the collective; and the lure of the universal (Eric Voegelin, Jan Assmann).
At a deeper level, both ages can and should be seen as the two poles of a single process, or rotating axis, moving from the abstract to the concrete in three broad phases:
(i) an initial identity (in this case, structured around the central myth/symbol of Incarnation wedded to the Greek intuition of the universal as logos/cosmos);
(ii) a movement of differentiation — and later, dissociation (leading to the birth of modern science, the modern disengaged subject, and the broader processes of secularization; all of which bring about the birth of the Planetary Era and the accelerating planetary crisis);
(iii) a new Gaian, or Gaianthropic identity in the making.
The cultivation of this new identity is a central task of the Second Axial Age, which itself can be seen as the ‘opportune moment’ (kairos) for the actualization of the deeper telos of the 2,500- year Axial Aion."
(https://books.openbookpublishers.com/10.11647/obp.0186.pdf)
Periodization
Sean Kelly:
" My proposal for the periodization of the larger arc that encompasses the two Axial Ages is as follows.
- Axial Aion (c. 800BCE to present):
- First Axial Age (c. 800–200BCE)
- Planetary Era (c. 1500CE to present)
- Second Axial Age (Gaian epoch or Gaianthropocene) (c. 1945?–)"
(https://books.openbookpublishers.com/10.11647/obp.0186.pdf)