Abstract
Karl Jaspers published his theory of an “Axial Age” 1949, which was translated into English in 1953. He claimed credit for elaborating the first full theory of the axial age. Yet 75 years earlier, in 1873, unknown to Jaspers and to contemporary scholars today, folklorist John Stuart-Glennie elaborated a fully developed and nuanced theory of what the termed “the Moral Revolution” to characterize the historical shift around roughly 600 B.C.E. in a variety of civilizations. He continued to write and develop his theory, and also presented his ideas to the Sociological Society of London in 1905. This chapter provides evidence for Stuart-Glennie’s claim to be the first to develop a fully articulated theory of what later became known as the axial age, as well as his three stage “ultimate law of history.” It also considers Lewis Mumford’s original contributions to the theory.
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Notes
Karl Jaspers, The Origin and Goal of History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1953), 2.
Karl Jaspers, Way to Wisdom: An Introduction to Philosophy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1953), 98.
Ernst von Lasaulx, Neuer Versuch einer Philosophie der Geschichte (Munich, 1856), 115.
Hans Joas, “The Axial Age Debate as Religious Discourse,” in The Axial Age and Its Consequences, ed. R. Bellah and H. Joas (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2012), 16.
Max Weber, Economy and Society, ed. Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich (Berkely: University of California Press, [1922] 1978), 442.
Cited in John D. Boy and John Torpey, “Inventing the Axial Age: The Origins and Uses of a Historical Concept.” Theory and Society 42.3 (2013):243.
Lewis Mumford, The Transformations of Man (New York: Harper and Row, 1956), 57.
Lewis Mumford, Technics and Human Development (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1967), 258.
Patrick Geddes, “The Late Mr. J.S. Stuart-Glennie,” The Sociological Review Vol A3, 4 (1910), 317.
John Stuart Stuart-Glennie, “Written Comments,” in Sociological Papers, Volume 1, ed. Francis Galton et al. (London: MacMillan & Co. Ltd, 1905), 232.
John Stuart-Glennie, “Sociological Studies,” in Sociological Papers, Volume 2, ed. Francis Galton et al. (London: Macmillan & Co. Ltd, 1906), 267.
John Stuart-Glennie, The Modern Revolution, Proemia III: Europe and Asia: Discussions of the Eastern Question in Travels through Independent, Turkish, and Austrian Illyria (London: Chapman and Hall, 1879), ix.
John Stuart-Glennie, In the Morningland: Or, The Law of the Origin and Transformation of Christianity. Volume I: The New Philosophy of History (London: Longman, Greens, and Company, 1873), vii–viii.
Richard M. Dorson, ed., Peasant Customs and Savage Myths, Selections from the British Folklorists, Vol. 2 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968), 515.
Hans Joas, “The Axial Age Debate as Religious Discourse,” in The Axial Age and Its Consequences, ed. R. Bellah and H. Joas (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2012), 9–29.
Jan Assman has claimed that the later canonization of the writings is more decisive than the originating figures themselves: “The decisive event is not the terrestrial existence of the great individuals but the canonization of their writings ....If we insist on a first period of axialization, we could point to the years about 200 BCE to 200 CE when the great canons were established: the Confucian, the Daoist, and the Buddhist canons in the East, and the Avesta, the Hebrew bible and the canon of Greek ‘classics’ in the West. This is not the time when Homo sapiens axialis, ‘the human being with whom we are still living,’ came into being, but when the texts were canonized that we are still reading.” Jan Assman, “Cultural memory and the Myth of the Axial Age,” in The Axial Age and Its Consequences, ed. R. Bellah and H. Joas (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2012), 399.
Lester L. Grabbe, A History of the Jews and Judaism in the Second Temple Period: Yehud — A History of the Persian Province of Judah v. 1. (London: T & T Clark, 2004), 355.
Auguste Comte, Introduction to Positive Philosophy, ed. Frederick Ferre (Indianapolis: Hacket Publishing Co. [1830] 1988), 1.
John Stuart-Glennie, “The Law of Historical Intellectual Development,” The International Monthly (April, 1901), 445.
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© 2014 Eugene Halton
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Halton, E. (2014). Jaspers, Stuart-Glennie, and the Origins of the Theory. In: From the Axial Age to the Moral Revolution: John Stuart-Glennie, Karl Jaspers, and a New Understanding of the Idea. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137473509_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137473509_1
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