By Fate and Path - Ten Lectures on the Pre-Qin Thinkers

Author: Huang Kejian
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-07-01
Features: Any nation that had an early civilization and subsequently participated in the long-term creation of human culture with its initial achievements has experienced such an era: all the preceding eras have moved towards it, as if preparing for its arrival, and all the subsequent eras have repeatedly reminisced about it. This era seems to be the axis around which the eras before and after revolve. The 20th-century German philosopher Karl Jaspers called it the "Axial Age." The characteristic of the "Axial Age," if summed up in a word, could be said to be the shift of humanistic focus from "fate" to "state" or what is often referred to as the transition from "destiny" to "path." China's "Axial Age" was during the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods when the Hundred Schools of Thought flourished.