The Origin and Goal of History

Introduction

Jaspers wrote the book after moving to Basel; it appeared in 1949. Against Hegel’s view of history centred on Christianity, he seeks an axis of world history that people of all cultures could recognise. He finds it in the Axial Age, roughly 800 to 200 BCE, when independently in China, India, Iran, Israel and Greece thinkers began to reflect on human existence as a whole – among them Confucius and Laozi, the Upanishads and the Buddha, Zarathustra, the prophets and the Greek philosophers. The later chapters discuss technology and the present as a new, global situation. The thesis has been debated by historians and sociologists such as Shmuel Eisenstadt and Robert Bellah.

More works by Karl Jaspers

• 1919Psychology of Worldviews
• 1932Philosophy