Product Description

From one of the world’s leading writers on religion and the highly acclaimed author of the bestselling A History of God, The Battle for God and The Spiral Staircase, comes a major new work: a chronicle of one of the most important intellectual revolutions in world history and its relevance to our own time.

In one astonishing, short period – the ninth century BCE – the peoples of four distinct regions of the civilized world created the religious and philosophical traditions that have continued to nourish humanity into the present day: Confucianism and Daoism in China; Hinduism and Buddhism in India; monotheism in Israel; and philosophical rationalism in Greece. Historians call this the Axial Age because of its central importance to humanity’s spiritual development. Now, Karen Armstrong traces the rise and development of this
transformative moment in history, examining the brilliant contributions to these traditions made by such figures as the Buddha, Socrates, Confucius and Ezekiel.

Armstrong makes clear that despite some differences of emphasis, there was remarkable consensus among these religions and philosophies: each insisted on the primacy of compassion over hatred and violence. She illuminates what this “family” resemblance reveals about the religious impulse and quest of humankind. And she goes beyond spiritual archaeology, delving into the ways in which these Axial Age beliefs can present an instructive and thought-provoking challenge to the ways we think about and practice religion today.

A revelation of humankind’s early shared imperatives, yearnings and inspired solutions – as salutary as it
is fascinating.

Excerpt from The Great Transformation:

In our global world, we can no longer afford a parochial or exclusive vision. We must learn to live and behave as though people in remote parts of the globe were as important as ourselves. The sages of the Axial Age did not create their compassionate ethic in idyllic circumstances. Each tradition developed in societies like our own that were torn apart by violence and warfare as never before; indeed, the first catalyst of religious change was usually a visceral rejection of the aggression that the sages witnessed all around them. . . .

All the great traditions that were created at this time are in agreement about the supreme importance of charity and benevolence, and this tells us something important about our humanity.


From the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #458064 in Books
• Published on: 2006-03-28
• Released on: 2006-03-28
• Formats: Abridged, Audiobook
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 10
• Binding: Audio CD

From Publishers Weekly
It's not what one may expect from a book about the development of the world's religions: "Crouched in his mother's womb, he lay in wait for his father, armed with a sickle, and the next time Uranus penetrated Gaia, he cut off his genitals and threw them to the earth." However, the Greek myth of Cronus clearly illustrates Armstrong's main thesis, that the "simultaneous" development of the world's religions during what Karl Jung called the axial age, is a direct result of the violence and chaos, both physical and spiritual, of past civilizations. Armstrong, a former nun turned self-described "freelance monotheist," has enough background and personal investment in the material to make it come alive. Her delivery is crystal clear, informative and, though somewhat academic, easy for the layman to understand. Her voice is straightforward yet wrought with palpable concern. This reinforces the book's goals of creating a clear understanding of where religious developments have come from and explaining how today's "violence of an unprecedented scale" parallels the activities that created the "axial age" in the first place.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post
In 1948, the German philosopher Karl Jaspers coined the term "Axial Age" to denote an astonishing era, from roughly 900 B.C. to 200 B.C., in which the foundations of the world's great religions were laid. This was the time of Socrates, Elijah, Siddhartha, Confucius. In her magisterial new exploration of the era, Karen Armstrong argues that all Axial Age traditions emphasized justice and were committed to the practice of "disciplined sympathy" and compassion. The Great Transformation is Armstrong at her best -- translating and distilling complex history into lucid prose that will delight scholars and armchair historians alike, drawing connections between the distant past and our own religious practices, suggesting that the antidotes to some of contemporary religion's excesses lie in the roots of the religious traditions themselves.

The Axial Age was anticipated, Armstrong writes, by the prophetic priest Zoroaster. Outraged at the violence of the Aryan warrior culture, Zoroaster conceived of the cosmos as a battle between the forces of good and evil, and he envisioned a great judgment that would eventually culminate in a world of peace and justice. Zoroastrianism is now known to us largely as a historical relic, but his "passionately ethical vision" and his determination to find a spiritual idiom that promoted peace bore fruit in the religious traditions of the Axial Age.

Other sages also emerged from the conflicts of the era: In India, the Axial Age coincided with the collapse of the Harappan civilization; in Greece, spirituality and philosophy flourished as the Mycenaean kingdom gave way to the Macedonian empire. Socratic philosophy was forged in the brutality of the Peloponnesian War. Breaking sharply from the Greek tradition of vengeance, Socrates argued that retaliation was always unjust and that the key to enlightenment and social virtue was acting with forbearance toward everyone, friend or enemy. The Buddha similarly taught that focusing on the self led to envy, conceit and pride; only a movement into "no self" would lead to "non-distress" and "unhostility."

When the kingdom of Israel, profitably allied with Assyria, failed to care for its poor, the prophet Amos warned that God would turn against his chosen people if they did not clean up their act. Amos, Armstrong writes, exemplified kenosis, or self-emptying: He believed that "his subjectivity had been taken over by God," so it was not Amos offering radical prophecies but God himself. God had experienced the injustices committed by Israel as painful and humiliating acts against him -- so Amos was calling the Israelites to feel, as their God felt, the sufferings of others.

Though this is a study of ancient history, Armstrong has a present-day agenda. We also live in a time of great social transformation and unrest, and, like the Axial sages, we should foster compassion, self-emptying and justice.

She notes that compassionate spirituality leaves room for doctrine: "This is not to say that all theology should be scrapped or that the conventional beliefs about God or the ultimate are 'wrong.' . . . The test is simple: if people's beliefs -- secular or religious -- make them belligerent, intolerant, and unkind about other people's faith, they are not 'skillful.' If, however, their convictions impel them to act compassionately and to honor the stranger, then they are good, helpful, and sound. This is the test of true religiosity . . . . Instead of jettisoning religious doctrines, we should look for their spiritual kernel."

Armstrong's emphasis on the things that unify Hinduism, Socratic philosophy, Judaism and Confucianism has just a whiff of the old colonialist approach to "world religions," reveling in religions' resemblances without sufficiently acknowledging their particularities. (The Brits who "discovered" Hinduism cast it, and every other religion, in terms that looked a lot like Christianity. Armstrong does much the same thing in reverse, casting Judaism and its spiritual descendants in terms that look a lot like Buddhism.) This approach fails to recognize the ways in which Buddhist compassion and Hindu compassion and Christian compassion and Jain compassion may meaningfully differ. Without an honest appraisal of those differences, it is hard to evaluate, say, the difference between the morality of the euthanasia advocate and the radical pro-life Catholic. Whose compassion trumps, that of George W. Bush or of John Paul II?

And yet, Armstrong's call to rededicate our religious selves to compassion, other-directed love and service is downright rousing. People from many different faiths will close this book reminded of the value their tradition places on compassion and recommitted to expressing it in their own religious idiom.

Reviewed by Lauren F. Winner
Copyright 2006, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

From Bookmarks Magazine
If you've already written God's biography (A History of God), surely it's a cakewalk to tackle the era before His ascendancy in theological affairs. But making sense of four disparate cultures and religious traditions in the space of 400 pages proves to be a risky proposition for Armstrong. Critics agree that her central theme, "the gradual elimination of violence from religion" (New York Times), makes for compelling reading, as does her weaving together of similarities among disparate faiths. Though her analysis shines, many reviewers feel the book suffers from too broad a focus; centuries are foreshortened, and even her supporters feel her conclusion doesn't do the book justice. With classic titles like The Battle for God and Islam: A Short History in her bibliography, the "runaway nun" remains our preeminent writer on popular religion, but this tome might best be reserved for her hardcore followers.
Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.

Customer Reviews

The Great Bifurcation: Man vs the Mob
"The position men have given to Jesus is a position of authority. It characterizes themselves. It cannot alter the eternal facts. Great is the soul, and plain. It is no flatterer, it is no follower; it never appeals from itself. It always believes in itself." Emerson, 'the Oversoul'

"Dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme liberty." Plato, Republic

The Great Transformation is a great intro to the ancient world. Its argument, however, treats its subjects with facile interpretations and an affected taste for the grandiose in religion--if it is remotely masculine, it is primitive backwards and evil (i.e. natural, empirical, scientific, reasoned), and if it is pacifistic, nihilistic or paternalistic, it is good (i.e. sublime, sycophantic, pity evoking, 'civic' ect.) Of course, the author is not above contradicting herself to push her existentially schizophrenic views on the ancients in relation to these tastes.

The main problem with her treatment of the main concept of Ahimsa in her thesis is that it is not only appropriated from Karl Jaspers "Axial Philosophers", it is a blatant distortion and misrepresentation of it. I quote here from Jaspers' section on the Buddha:

"Accordingly, the Buddhist monks were ENJOINED TO TRUTHFULLNESS both in their deepsest thoughts and in the actions and words of everyday life. They were further enjoined to be chaste, to abstain from intoxicating drink, not to steal, NOT TO HARM AN LIVING CREATURE (AHIMSA), and to observe the four modes of inner conduct: loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, equanimity toward the impure and the evil."
--All caps are my own.

In Armstrong's formula, ahimsa is not only the antipode of violence but also against aristocracy, nobility, passion, reason/logic, science ect.; these are not only bad, but moreover EVIL. What is more, by implication these are what the modern world is in excess of according to her, and the source of such horrors as genocide, racism, chauvinism, people watching television for too many hours, school shootings et al. The logic is impeccable, but gives no insight into the eras discussed, rather, to Armstrong, history is to be read as an exegesis of the present: an exercise in intellectual narcissism of the first order.

On the contrary, her distortion of ahimsa as total rejection of violence is an ultimately indefensible ethical position: pacifism requires one to look on as a neighbor is robbed, a spouse raped, one's self beaten. It precludes the duty of self-defense and mutual aid in the service thereof at the price of Liberty. Armstrong is demanding annihilation over Liberty, annihilation as liberty, the ancient nihilist formula. A simple examination between aristocratically or monarchically lead rebellions and mob incited ones in history demonstrates which side has less in the ways of ethical principles, respect for human life ect. Mass wave attacks, guillotines and clamor for privilege vs. careful planning, a desire for liberty and the will to protect it for one's self and one's neighbors. Plato was right, Armstrong needs to stop tracing shadows.

Synopsis:
The leaps in logic are Evil Kieneval worthy but not unexpected coming from a existential farce pusher, who fails to extirpate the dangers perceived, let alone pose them coherently, whereas she does succeeds to promote every Myth that constitute the problems of which she is so superficially aware of and incapable of articulating. For example, non-violence means to Armstrong, that the Greeks were violent egotists who wasted their time being agonal and engaging in stuffy rational discourse; their establishment of science and philosophy, art and culture were O.K. Therefore, Buddhists and Confucians were more ethical. Lao Tzu was very significant, but since he more or less presented a system of metaphysics, ethics and epistemology different from Confucious, so he really is inferior to Confucious since he had more 'social conscience' [class conscious you mean?]. From this, early Judea was not a rabble of tribes but an advanced civilization, who established the foundation of Western Civilization [everywhere else, an oxymoron to proletarian Armstrong] because the apologist for their violent excursions and war deity Yahweh was Jesus, and Jesus was great. Plato and Aristotle tried, but since they believed ocholcracy was dangerous and supported other forms of social organization, they were tyrants and tyrants [individuals, e.g. Socrates] are enemies of the people. There are no such things as Ancient Egypt or Babylon.

The book's coherence hangs not so much by a thread, than as by levitation. The ethical insights are banal and platitudinous. The purpose of the book is not history or even a period of ethical discovery; it's the pedantic sermonizing of a snob telling you what you ought to believe and think about such things.

The Great Transformation is not about the ancient world, it is an extended justification of Armstrong's snobbish and puddle-shallow bourgeois spirituality interspersed with monumental ethical pretensions. The narrative exists solely as the means an indictment against aspects of the world that affirm ethical world views other than her own, which are in the main an eclectic collection of guileless and shameless pacifistic, nihilistic and fatalistic platitudes; these profound mores establish her place in the world of letters as educator and shepherd. "Bravo" --Still, plenty of heads will nod.

A final joke which runs counter to everything in The Great Transformation:
Q: Who are the greatest figures in Western history?
A: Jesus and Socrates, of course.
Q: Who killed Jesus and Socrates?
A: Democracy killed Jesus and Socrates.

The Great transformation ignores the single most important ethical question of the era as lived and died for by Jesus and Socrates: man vs the mob, liberty vs security, freedom vs equality (slavery). Armstrong either choses not to see this great bifurcation that runs through the history of human civilization that sacrifices man for ideals and mobs, or she herself is a crypto-advocate of the latter--via pacifism (Lay down and die.)

"The reliance on authority measures the decline of religion, the withdrawal of the soul." Emerson, "the Oversoul"
Armstrong asks us to rely on the authority of the so called Axials, when the future of mankind rests on the actions of morally autonomous agents ethically independent of ideology and dogma.

"Your silence gives consent."
--Plato

Not What I Was Hoping For
I really, really wanted to like this book. Its premise is compelling; during the so-called "Axial Age"--that is, from 1600 to 900 BC--world events led to the rise of four great religious traditions: the development of Confucianism and Daoism in China, Hinduism and Buddhism in India, monotheism in Israel, and philosophical rationalism in Greece. Earlier beliefs that the gods (plural) were to be worshipped for their ability to bring bounty to a particular people or to assist them in territorial warfare evolved to the point where other-directed love and service, empathy, and compassion became the most important considerations. Because this is my own personal ethos, I was interested to understand the historical context that gave birth to such thinking. But Armstrong is a religious scholar; in her quest for comprehensive accuracy, she bogs down in too many details that are irrelevant to the lay reader. (A psychologist might call her obsessive-compulsive or at least note that she would be an "over-incorporator" in Rorschach terms.) A Reader's Digest condensed version of this tome would have been welcome. But I became stuck around page 274, unable to trudge through the next 200 pages to the end. Pity, as I was just starting to get to the good stuff. But her accounting of too many tribal migrations and temple desecrations had killed off my interest by then.

kumbaya
It started off badly when the narrative began with the notion that once upon a time proto-Aryans lived peacefully and justly until etc.

I found the historic events described to support the "axial" thesis rather selective, and the manner of their interpretation contrived.

Not an honest historical account.