"All and Nothing"

"All and Nothing: Reflections on Experience and Transcendence in the Eurasian Axial Age, c. 800-200 BCE"

by Peter Von Sivers

After critically examining the concept of the Axial Age in the writings of Jaspers, Voegelin, and Eisenstadt, the paper examines the specific concepts with which the Axial Age thinkers described their "breakthroughs" to transcendence. On one hand, the thinkers denied that Unity, encountered in the Beyond of transcendence, is intelligible and can be expressed conceptually. On the other hand, they developed detailed analyses of Being (Greece), of the Self (India and China), and of the Personified One (Yahweh in Israel, Ahuramazda in Iran), in which they made transcendence intelligible. They did not resolve the inconsistenies resulting from this two-pronged approach, while in contemporary thought the dichotomies contained in the concept of Unity are considered to be irresolvable.