26 July 2019 @ 1PM EST
ZOOM video conference: https://zoom.us/j/711610894
The present itinerary
- brief recap of anything left unexplored from Chapters 1 -3,
@Michael_Stumpf, @patanswer, @johnnydavis54 and @achronon will each take a turn “leading off” with an individual chapter, sharing thoughts, reflections, and/or experiences in reaction to specific chapters, which loosely fit the current group ‘roles’ (kinesthetics / history / activism-vision / hermeneutics):
- 4 “Embodiment, Transcendence, and Contingency” (Michael)
- 5 “The Axial Age and Global History” (TJ)
- 6 “The Buddha’s Meditative Trance” (John)
- 7 “The Idea of Transcendence” (Ed)
Seed Questions
- Q1
- Q2
Seed Questions from first discussion:
- What is second-order culture? How can we use our knowledge well to “presence” the best future?
- What is the Axial Age? What about this piece of the past speaks best to our situation(s) today?
Context, Backstory, and Related topics
No reading is required to join in, but if you know absolutely nothing about the Axial Age this very brief summary of the original thought by Jaspers himself might prove helpful:
The Axial Age of Human History:A Base for the Unity of Mankind – Commentary
Philosophy strives to interpret history as a single totality.View Post
Working bibliography
(These ‘may come up in discussion, may not’ – sweat not!):
-Bondarenko, Dmitri M. & Ken Baskin (2011) “Living through a Second Axial Age: Notes in the Time of an Irreversible Global Cultural Transformation”, Globalistics: Ways to Strategic Stability and the Problem of Global Governance Conference 54 , Moscow, available at https://www.academia.edu/1907699/Living_through_a_Second_Axial_Age_Notes_in_the_Time_of_an_Irreversible_Global_Cultural_Transformation
-Bellah, Robert N. (2011) Religion in Human Evolution (Belknap Press)
-Black, Anthony (2008) “The ‘Axial Period’: What Was It and What Does It Signify?”, The Review of Politics , Vol. 70, #1 (Winter), pp. 23-39, available at https://www.sfu.ca/~poitras/rp_axial_08.pdf
-Donald, Merlin (1993) “Précis of Origins of the Modern Mind”, Behavioral and Brain Sciences 16, pp. 737-791, available at https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/0f26/24745758b4e7ab16f021c674fe0de44561e0.pdf
-Eisenstadt, Shmuel N. (ed.) (1986) The Origins & Diversity of Axial Age Civilizations , Albany, State University of New York Press.
-Gebser, Jean (1985) The Ever-Present Origin , Athens, Ohio University Press.
-Graeber, David (2014) Debt: The First Five-Thousand Years , London, Melville House, in particular Chapter 9 “The Axial Age”.
-Bellah, Robert N. & Hans Joas, (eds.) (2012) The Axial Age and its Consequences , Cambridge, Harvard University Press.
-Kripal, Jeffrey J. (2019) The Flip: Epiphanies of Mind and the Future of Knowledge , New York, Bellevue Literary Press.
-Löffler, Davor (2018) “Distributing Potentiality: Post-capitalist Economics and the Generative Time Régime”, Journal for Politics, Gender and Culture , Vol. 15, #1-2, pp. 8-44.
-Ong, Walter J., (1982, 3rd ed., 2012) Orality and Literacy , London and New York, Routledge.
-Wendt, Alexander
(2003) “Why a World State is Inevitable”, European Journal of International Relations , Vol. 9(4), pp. 491-542.
(2015) Quantum Mind and Social Science , Cambridge, Cambridge University Press