The Origin and Goal of History is a historical philosophy work by the famous German philosopher Jaspers. The book broke through the long-standing western centralism and creatively put forward the theory of axial period. He divided history into stages macroscopically, and thought that human development experienced four stages, namely, prehistoric, ancient civilization, axial period and scientific and technological era.
Among them, prehistoric civilization and ancient civilization are an intermittent period, and the axial period is from 800 BC to 200 AD. He emphasized the importance of the axial period and proposed that every leap in human history should review the axial period, that is, revival.
In the Origin and Goal of History published by 1949, it is said that 800 BC to 200 BC, especially 600 BC to 300 BC, is the "axis era" of human civilization. The area where the "Axis Age" occurred was about 30 degrees north latitude, that is, the range of 25 degrees to 35 degrees north latitude.
This period is a major breakthrough period of human civilization spirit. In the Axial Age, great spiritual teachers appeared in all civilizations-Socrates, Plato and Aristotle in ancient Greece, Jewish prophet in Israel, Sakyamuni in ancient India, Confucius and Laozi in China ... Their ideological principles have shaped different cultural traditions and have always influenced human life.
What's more, although China, Indian, Middle East and Greek are separated by Qianshan Mountain, their cultures in the Axis era have many similarities.
At that time, the ancient cultures of ancient Greece, Israel, China and India all experienced "the awakening of ultimate concern". In other words, people in these places began to face the world in a rational and moral way, and at the same time religion came into being.
They are the transcendence and breakthrough of primitive culture. Different types of transcendence and breakthrough determine the different cultural forms of the West, India, China and Islam today.