The Great Transformation

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Overview

The Great Transformation by Karen Armstrong, published in 2006, is a popular history of the Axial Age, the period roughly between 800 and 200 BCE in which major religious and philosophical traditions emerged in China, India, the Middle East and Greece. Armstrong argues that these traditions arose as responses to violence and social change, and that they share an emphasis on compassion and ethical self-discipline. The book matters because it offers a single story linking Confucius, the Buddha, the Hebrew prophets and Greek philosophers.

Context

The term Axial Age comes from the philosopher Karl Jaspers, who proposed in 1949 that a pivotal period of human thought occurred around the middle of the first millennium BCE. Armstrong, a British author and former nun who writes widely on religion, builds on this idea and traces how each region responded to its own crisis of conflict and urbanisation.