Axial Age Theory Essay

Karl Jaspers’s Axial Age theory explains how our modern human civilization came into existence. It explains why our modern human civilization is deeply rooted in Anthropocentrism, which is the belief that human beings are the crucial, dominant, vital or are the most important species on the planet, basically the center of the world. Lynn White’s arguments discuss how Christianity is behind those values today and one indication is that Christianity has created a divide between us and all other organisms (the animals and nature). However the Axial Age theory suggests that when this divide occurred it was experienced by all the major civilizations around the world at about the same time, so the arguments Lynn White makes could apply to not only Christianity but other religions as well in the way that …show more content…
Before the Axial shift in our mind set, human beings held deep respect for nature, they had a positive view of the world, and they believed they were a part of nature which as a whole consisted of them and the animals, plants, resources as well as their gods. We can see this in paganism with this belief being referred to as Animism. Lynn White suggests that once Christianity conquered paganism we incorporated Anthropocentrism into our world, which is referred to as being post Axial by Karl Jaspers, and as a result we are negative in our view of the world and treat nature in an objective manner. Axial Age Theory suggests that this all do to our change in self-reflexivity, which is the change in the way we as humans view our environment and ourselves. This change in self-reflexivity was a result from the many significant figures that influenced humanity, again examples such as Jesus and Plato. We can see how Christianity is not the only religion that influenced humanity during our shift in mind-set, other religions contributed to this change as