Published originally in Italian in 2013, this edited volume is the offspring of a research project developed at the Istituto Storico Italo-Germanico about transition as a historiographical problem. The volume asks the question of whether modernity is an “Axial Age,” a term that Jaspers introduced in 1949.1 For him, the period between the eighth and third centuries b.c. marked a major transition in the development of mankind. Its two key features were more highly developed societies (with greater control over their natural environment) and a parallel progress of multiple forms of thought (primarily in philosophy, politics, religion, and ethics).
Interdisciplinary interest in Jaspers’ Axial Age thesis has increased in the last decade, including contributions in sociology, history, anthropology, Biblical scholarship, and philosophy.2 According to Pombeni, some of the new contributions about the Axial Age downplay or simply ignore the transformative role of religion. This volume, on the contrary,...