Ch6

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Outlines: i. sums up about 500 years or so, up to the beginning of the Christian era ii. knowledge spread across Eurasia in an axis-like shape iii. religious leaders founded traditions with huge followings that still have influence today iv. axial age and politics helped form the future i. Southwest Asia, Iran ii. founded by Zoroaster iii. late 7th – early 6th century BCE iv. dualist religion a. fire / light / good vs. night / darkness/ evil v. influenced other Eurasian religions vi. communities of Zoroastrians still exist today i. India ii. founded by Brahman iii. use of written texts iv. explored moral implications i. India ii. founded by Vardhamana Inatraputra a. aka //Mahavira = “//the great hero” iii. 6th – early 5th century BCE iv. free the soul from evil a. chastity b. detachment c. truth d. selflessness e. charity v. practiced in full rigor, in monasteries and religious communities vi. followers only India i. India ii. founded by Gautama Siddharta a. aka The Buddha = “the enlightened one” iii. mid 6th – early 4th century BCE iv. tradition or code of life, rather than full religion v. achieve nirvana a. “extinction of flame” or escape from desire (the cause for unhappiness) b. through mediations, prayer, unselfish behavior vi. monasteries and individuals vii. development of reincarnation i. founded by Laoiz ii. 4th century BCE iii. magic iv. disengagement and control of one’s suffering G. Judaism** i. founded by Abraham ii. 7th – 5th century BCE iii. Old Testamennt i. founded by Jesus Christ a. the Messiah i. founded by Muhammad i. Aristoltle a. physician’s son from northern Greece ii. Plato a. Athenian aristocrat; Aristotle’s teacher iii. discussed science, logic, politics, and literature unlike all others . The Thoughts of the Axial Age
 * . The Axial Age**
 * A. Zoroastrianism**
 * B. Brahmanism**
 * C. Jainism**
 * D. Buddhism**
 * E. Daoism**
 * F. Confucius vs. Mozi & Universal Love
 * H. Christianity**
 * I. Islam**
 * J. Greek Philosphy**
 * Thematic approach: helps to reveal the connections and contrasts

1) Religious Thinking 2) Political Thinking i. Political Pessimism ii.Political Optimism 3) Challenging Illusion: effort to see beyond appearances to underlying realities 4) Math 5) Reason 6) Science 7) Medicine Skepticism __TIMELINE
 * Creation
 * Idea of nothing enabled thinkers to understand the order of nature in a new way
 * One can imagine creation from nothing once they get the concept of nothing
 * Before the axial age, creation narratives were more like explanations of how the universe came to be the way it is
 * Egyptian myths: creator transforming chaos into a world
 * Big bang theory: universe began to expand from a small core
 * Masters of early Upanishads (India) called nothing “the void” and thought that Brahman created the world
 * Leucippus (Greece) who devised an atomic theory, said that Plato’s creator-god did not start from nothing, but rearranged what was already there.
 * Some ancient Greek poetry thought of emotion or thought as the prime mover of the universe
 * Feeling is thought unformulated and thought is feeling expressed in communicable ways
 * John’s gospel was the one that Greek thought influenced most heavily
 * Jews: idea of a creator who always existed but who made everything else out of nothing
 * Creator was unique, purely spiritual, eternal, unchanging and unlimited power
 * If matter is eternal, how come it changes?
 * Monotheism- Idea of a unique God
 * Until first millennium B.C.E., most people imagined an invisible world with gods
 * Greeks arrayed gods in order to systematize the world of the gods in the axial age
 * Persians reduced to two- dualism
 * Indian henotheism: multiplicity of gods representing divine unity
 * Jews: Hashem was their only God- he is “jealous” (unwilling to allow divine status to any rival)
 * Treated Hashem as a treasure too precious to share with non-Jews
 * Jews’ own history of sacrifices and sufferings were example of faith
 * Splinter group of Jews recognized Jesus as the human face of God who opened its ranks to non-Jews.
 * Buddhism explained the need for a creator by upholding the universe was itself infinite and everlasting
 * Idea of unique creator and polytheism : uniqueness can be divided, comprehensiveness- something that sums up everything.
 * Muhammad studied Judaism and Christianity and incorporated the Jewish understanding of God in Islam
 * Divine Love
 * Aristotle thought of God as a perfect being: needs nothing else
 * Unselfishness recommanded Brahmanism (world is illusory), Greek thought (world is divine), Confucianism (morally neutral), Zoroastrianism (evil), Christianity (good) or Buddhism (transient)
 * Axial-age thinking insisted that humankind was special
 * Biblical God made man in His own image
 * Aristotle considered human soul superior to others because it had rational
 * Xunzi(China): humans were able to form societies and act collaboratively
 * Buddhism: ranked humans high for purposes of reincarnation
 * Divine love: emotionally satisfying
 * Creation was an act of love consistent with God’s nature
 * Xunzi: believed that the humankind was originally a grim swamp of violence
 * Confucius: Man is born for uprightness
 * Solutions to the problem of human nature: freedom, discipline (the state was an agent for virtue)
 * Genesis: God made humans good and free and the abuse of freedom made people bad
 * The way to overcome human deficiencies was to strengthen the state
 * Plato’s rules for the ideal state were harsh, reactionary and illiberal since he was one of the rich people
 * Censorship, repression, militarism, regimentation, collectivism etc.
 * Political power should be concentrated in a self-electing class of philosopher rulers called Guardians
 * Intellectual superiority (heredity and education)
 * Justified the tyrannical leaders- they know the best
 * Chinese” the consensus among the sages was that the ruler should be bound by law
 * Ethics should override obedience to the law (however, law could function without any respect for elites)
 * Legalists: “goodness” was meaningless and society required only obedience
 * Modern fascism
 * Human nature was essentially good
 * Confucianism: state should liberate subjects to fulfill their potential
 * Greek democracy: entrusted citizens with a voice in affairs of state
 * Serving rulers was a duty not the purpose of life
 * China: reflect the universe-unity could not be compromised
 * Ruler should consult the people’s interest
 * Daoist: ruler’s job is to enforce virtue
 * Confucius: aristocracy and subordinate kings to an allegiance ordained by heaven
 * Indian states with ruling group, electing leaders for fixed terms among themselves
 * Greece: considered states to be purely practical mechanisms
 * Aristotle thought monarchy was the best in theory but not in practice
 * Aristocratic gov’t with manageable number of superior men administering the state
 * Aristotle denounced democracy because it could lead to demagogues and mob rule
 * Roman state: model for most republican survivals and revivals in Western history
 * Jesus: “love one another”, welcomed social outcasts
 * Sages struggled against illusion
 * Skepticism: mistrust of all of human capacity to achieve more than practical happiness
 * Indian sages discovered in numbers a genuinely limitless universe
 * Jain speculators tried to demonstrate how impossible it was to attain the infinite
 * Invention of geometry showed how mind can reach realities that the senses obscure
 * Reality can be invisible, untouchable and yet accessible to reason
 * Pythagoras (Greece): musical harmonies can be expressed as arithmetical ratios, consistent ratios characterize the lenghts of the sides of right-angled triangles
 * Formulated the idea that numbers are real
 * Thought that numbers exist even without something to count- “All things are numbers”
 * Confucius “I sought the truth in measures and numbers”
 * Rationalism: the doctrine that unaided reason can elicit truth and solve the world’s problems
 * Parmenides (Greek rationalist): if one believes geometrical figures are real, one believes in the truth of a super-sensible world
 * Nonexistence of anything is an incoherent concept
 * Hui Shih: wrote books about how data act directly on the mind, which processes them before they become sensations and thoughts can make up its own objects since its pure
 * Rationalism became an excapist’s alternative to reality
 * Parmenides: only unchanging and eternal were real
 * Zeno: arrow in flight always occupies a space equal to its size so it is always at rest
 * Reason helped to restrain rival approaches to regulate the world
 * Also helped to shape the world, formulate laws and construct society
 * Logic: fascinating by-product of practical needs
 * Aristotle- taught us how to think
 * Thought that we can break valid arguments down into phases (syllogisms), in which we can infer a conclusion from two premises that prior agreement have established true
 * Nyaya school: five-stage breakdowns that resembled syllogisms
 * Lu Shi Chong Qui: some metals may seem soft but can be combined to form harder ones
 * First appearances are deceptive
 * Democritus: “Truth lies in the depths”
 * Distinction between what is natural and supernatural
 * Shen Xu: ghosts were just the products of fears
 * Confucius: wisdom is a respect for gods and demons
 * Professed interest in politics and practical morality
 * Believed that natural world is responsive to human sin or goodness
 * Greek origins of science are inseparable from shamanic attempts to penetrate the mysteries
 * Which caused the necessity for the thinkers to observe nature systematically
 * Archimedes’s discovery of mechanics of leverage
 * Chinese practical science: systematic investigation of nature through observation and experiment
 * Developed from omen-seeking practices of early Daoism
 * Abnormal state was believed to be the possession by demon
 * Could be caused by material or spiritual causes
 * China: rely on diet, work and personal morale for bodily health
 * Greece: Hippocratics thought that health was a state of balance among blood, phlegm, and black and yellow bile
 * Hippocratics and Chinese counterparts started to believe that nothing needs to be explained in divine terms
 * India: Arthaveda-diseases and demons are more or less identical
 * Susutra-concern surgery
 * Charaka: concentrate exclusively on diet and drugs
 * Suspicion that the world is purposeless: If it was purposeless, it wasn’t made for man who was insignificant
 * Aristotle’s “Final Cause”- world is a random event
 * Wangchong: humans live “like lice in the folds of a garment”
 * World without purpose does not need God
 * Epicurus (Greece)- atoms are perishable and everything is composed of them therefore there can’t be immortal soul
 * Sextus Empiricus (Roman)- invention of gods as a means of social control
 * Pyrrho of Elis (Greece) -one can find equally good reasons on both sides of any argument and the only wise course is to stop thinking and judge by appearances
 * All reasoning starts from assumptions so none is secure
 * Late Greek philosophy focused on the choices for personal happiness and good of society
 * Stoicism: nature is morally neutral, only human acts are good or evil
 * Fatalism and indifference are remedies for pain

Date__ ||

__Event__ || __

Significance __ ||
 * late 600s-early 500s B.C.E || Zoroaster founded Zoroastrianism || dualist religion (good vs. evil, fire/light are good, dark/night are bad), Ahuramazda (good) and Ahriman (bad), central locations --> influence on other Eurasian religions ||
 * late 500s-early 400s B.C.E. || Vardhamana Jnatrputra founded Jainism || selflessness, truth, purity (via asceticism-extreme self desire) ||
 * mid 500s- early 300s B.C.E. || Guatama Siddharta founded Bhuddism || escape from desire --> temptation and unhappiness to endlessly be stuck in the endless cycle of rebirth. GOAL: achieve Nirvana ||
 * 300s B.C.E.-period of warring states || Laozi founded Daoism || disengagement with the goal of controlling suffering ||
 * 600s-400s B.C.E. during Babylonian captivity (Judaism) || Abraham was the first to establish covenant with G-d || Monotheism, created by the covenant and is renewed by Moses, Torah-law and ethical code ||
 * 33 C.E. onwards-common era (Christianity) || Abraham was the first to establish covenant with G-d || extension of Judaism: Jesus is the Messiah and the savior, G-d is merciful; monotheism ||


 * Date:** 6th century B.C.E.
 * Event:** FIrst generation of Greek sages
 * Significance:** It shows how the most influential of the time, Heraclituus, would not take on pupils but still recorded his studies in writings, which he placed in the temple of Artemis at Ephesus. This was in some ways his local public library.


 * Date:** Early 4th century B.C.E.
 * Event:** Socrates teaching Plato and others
 * Significance:** One of the most famous Greek sage of the time. It was his most important era of teaching. He was in contact and conflict with all the Greek schools of his day. He attacked those know as Sophist.


 * Date:** End of the 4th century B.C.E.
 * Event:** Epicurus and Zeno of Citium established schools in Athens within a few years of each other
 * Significance:** This led to the defining of networks and stimulating competition.


 * Date:** 380 B.C.E.
 * Event:** The Academy of Athens was founded.
 * Significance:** An example of now educational institutions leading to networks and stimulating competition. It also showed mater-pupil relationships which created tradition called cross-generational networks.


 * Date:** Mid-fourth century B.C.E.
 * Event:** In China Mencius found his patron the, King of Wei, who was only interested in schemes to improve military efficiency.
 * Significance:** This is an example of how royal patrons were rarely disinterested.


 * Date:** Mid-third century B.C.E.
 * Event:** In China the prince of Zhao allegedly had 1000 scholars at his court.
 * Significance:** This shows how patronizing sages became a source of princely prestige.


 * Date:** 220 B.C.E.
 * Event:** Qin ruler burned books.
 * Significance:** Shows how some historical events may not have been an act against learning than a gesture of partisanship on behalf of the favored.

Date Event || -Gospel according to John was influenced by Greek though rather than relying on traditions to the Jews || Early 600s C.E. || The prophet Muhammad studied Judaism and Christianity while incroportating the Jewish understanding of God in Islam-Islam became at least as appealing as CHristianity || Early 500s B.C.E. || Athenian lawmakers appealed to the body of citizens to legitimate laws || Late 500s B.C.E. || Philospohers in southern Italy taught “All thigs that are born with life in them should be treated as kindred” || 400s B.C.E. || Leucippus (devised atomic theory) raised an objection to the void, notioned by early Upanishads in India, saying that the void is non-being || Early 400s || The Chinese formula by Xunzi agreed with || 300s B.C.E. || A school of legalists made a pretended virtue that goodnees was meaningless and that society required only obedience || Mid 300s B.C.E. || Aristotle developed a hierarchy of living souls, where the human soul was superior to those of plants and animals || 300s B.C.E. || Aristotle made a masterly survey of the republican and aristocratic systems, and though monarcy was the best stystem in theory || Mid 200s B.C.E. || Xunzi said the nature of man is evil and his goodness is only acquired by training || -most people who imagined an invisible world supposed that it was diverse (crowded w/gods) ||
 * Date:** 33 C.E.
 * Event:** Jesus and spread of Christianity over the next two millennia
 * Significance:** This was the start and spread of one of the first world religion
 * Thoughts of Axial Age Timeline
 * End of 2nd Millenium C.E. || Islam had attracted almost as many followers as Christianity ||
 * Before 1st Millenium B.C.E. || Idea of Creation
 * Early 7th Century C.E.
 * Early 6th Century B.C.E.
 * Late 6th Century B.C.E
 * Early 400s B.C.E. || Aristotle’s idea and said humans are the noblest of earthly beings ||
 * 5th Century B.C.E
 * Early 5th Century B.C.E
 * 4th century B.C.E
 * Mid-4th century B.C.E.
 * 4th Century B.C.E
 * Mid-3rd century B.C.E.
 * Late 1st Century B.C.E. || Monotheism

Id terms

The term axial works well for 3 main reasons. Divine love is the concept that God has ongoing love and interest in all human beings. Religions such as Judaism used this concept perhaps to cope with the frustrations of their history, in which they had never recovered political independence. Divine love is emotionally satisfying because love is a universal emotion. Christianity acquired universal appeal because they made God’s love embrace all humans. This idea of divine love has affected politics and political thinking because ever since the axial age, political solutions to the problem of human nature have always been of two contrasting kinds: those that emphasize freedom, to release human goodness, and those that emphasize discipline, to restrain human wickedness. The Legalists basic principle was that “goodness” is meaningless. They thought that society only required obedience, and that what the law actually said was irrelevant; all that mattered was that it should be obeyed. They believed that morality was nonsense and ethics was a “gnawing worm” that would destroy the state. The only good was the good of the state, and law and order was worth tyranny and injustice. According to the Legalists, neither the wisdom of ancient kings nor an ethical code would make a state strong. Instead “good” and “bad” were defined by whatever the self-interest of the ruler demanded. A system of harsh punishments and rewards, regulated through laws and enforced without exceptions, should guarantee good behavior within the state. The Legalists considered military service and agriculture as the only occupations beneficial to the welfare of the state and discouraged all scholarship. Confucius thought that “Man is born for uprightness. If he lose it and yet live, it is merely luck.” He believed ethics should override obedience to the law. Confucianism was a Chinese doctrine founded by Confucius that emphasized learning and the fulfillment of obligations among family members, citizens, and the state. Confucianism demanded that the state should liberate subjects to fulfill their potential. They believed that the superior man considers righteousness to be essential, and that riches and honors should only be obtained in a proper way or not at all. They also think that people should be modest but exceed in their actions. For science, Confucius discouraged followers from thinking “about the dead until you know the living.” Confucians showed interest in human affairs and indifference to the rest of nature. They only studied nature to dig out what they regarded as superstition, and the natural world is responsive to human sin or goodness. Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and a student of Plato. He strapped common sense into intelligible rules. He taught us how to think. His techniques, throughout the years, have been seeped into mental habits through the channels of tradition. Aristotle said we can break valid arguments down into phrases called syllogisms, in which we can infer a necessary conclusion from two premises that prior demonstration or agreement have established to be true. For example, if the premises are “All men are mortal” and “Socrates is a man,” it follows that “Socrates is mortal.” Aristotle was the best representative of Greek science because he said “we must have facts” and he then proceeded to gather facts in enormous quantities. Pythagoras spent most of his time teaching life in a Greek colony in southern Italy. He attracted stories— he communed with the gods; he had a golden thighbone; he was a unique being between human and divine. Today he is most famous for discovering that musical harmonies can be expressed as arithmetical ratios, and that consistent ratios characterize the lengths of the sides of right-angled triangles. He was the first thinker to establish that numbers really exist. He said that numbers are the basis on which the cosmos is constructed. “All things have numbers,” he said. He thought that geometry is the architecture of the universe.
 * 1.Axial Age –> reason for selection of this term? significance of this term?**
 * 1) the areas in which the thought of the sages and their schools unfolded stretched, axislike, across Eurasia, in regions that more or less influenced each other.
 * 2) the thought of the period has remained central to, and supporting of, so much later thought- not just in the lands where it originated, but all over the world, as its influence spreads.
 * 3) The religious leaders of the time founded traditions of such power that they had huge followings. The secular thinkers ran out as grooves of logic and science in which people think.
 * 2. Zoroaster/Zoroastrianism**- started in late 7th/6 century B.C. Zoroastrianism assumed that conflicting forces of good and evil. Dualist way of making sense of the world, as an area of conflict between opposing principles of good and evil. Ahura Mazda was the good deity that was present in fire and light, his opposing force was Ahriman the god of evil represented by night and darkness. Zoroastrian is still practiced in small patches around the world. Zoroaster had no comparable successor in his homeland.
 * 3. Brahmanism (modern term: Hinduism)**- Developed in India around the middle of the millenium. Many written records have survived through the time period describing Brahmanism. Believed that Brahman was the essence of the universe and present within all of us. The first most basic goal of life was pleasure(Kama).PLeasures could be in art,music, drama, but most especially food and sex (Kama Sutra). The second goal was the acquisition of wealth(artha). The third was abiding by law or duty(dharma). Hindu law was eternal and unchanging. Essential structure of the law was fourfold division of social classes. priests and warriors at the top to the commoners and servile class at the bottom. Part of the “caste system”. After death people are reborn with their form shaped on the good or evil that was done in the presvious life. This process is called transmigration(samsara).
 * 4.Jainism/Vardhamana Jnatrputra-** Located/ started around 500-400 B.C on the indian subcontinent, Vardhamana Jnatputra is universally known as the Mahavira, the great hero. Founder of Jainism a way of life that focused on freeing the soul from evil by ascetic practices, chastity, detachment, truth, selflessness, and charity. The class=”mceItemHidden”> religious should only accept what is freely given, preferring starvation to ungenerous life. Jainist take nothing more than is need to survive so they eliminate all evil and bad from the body.
 * 5. Buddhism-** On the indian sub continent in 500-400 Bc. Gautama Siddharta never truly said anything about a good but rather prescribed practices that would liberate devotees from the troubles of this world. In this way if can almost be viewed as a life code instead of a religion. Gautama known as the buddha or enlightened one, taught a combination of prayer, meditation, and unselfish behavior that of varying degrees of intensity for different individuals could achieve happiness. The object was escape from desire which is the root of unhappiness. The ultimate extinction of all sense of self in a mystical state called nirvana was the aim of practitioners of Buddhism.
 * 6. Daoism-** In the 300s B.C in eastern China, the primary goal of Daoism was the identification of detachment from the world with the pursuit of immortality is explicit in writings attributed to Laozi, founder of Daoism. Laozi’s doctrine was a response to the insecurities of life among the warring states. Disengagement would give the Daoist power over suffering. Even though maybe based on traditional magic, Daoism was genuinely new. Daoists also had some sophisticated science practices. Daoists used practical science- systematic investigation of nature through observation and experiment. These habits of observation and experiment developed from magical practices of early Daoism. Daoism has some strange ceremonies attributed with it but Daoism also teaches that nature is like any other beast to be tamed or foe to be dominated.
 * Jewish People-** The Jewish people started in Levant, Asia’s Mediterranean coastal region. The most evidence about them is gained through biblical passages and archaeological sources; however, there are problems gathering evidence about their early history as some of the archaeological evidence contradicts the biblical evidence. It is known that the Jews lived in two kingdoms, Judah and Israel, which fought each other and later were overcome by wars with other neighboring empires. After their kingdoms and holy city Jerusalem city fell Jews were forced into the foreign rule of states like Babylon. This developed their sense of faith, and being tested by god for a reward later as it is written in the Hebrew testament. They developed the belief that the tests were part of a covenant with God to gain deliverance.
 * Christianity-** Christianity is a splinter sect of Judaism which was sparked by Jesus. Jesus, according to the evidence we have, was a Jew who had an independent view on religion wanting to get rid of money making in the church. The evidence he have though is little, because almost no one but his followers wrote about him. By his followers he was named Christ which was a way of saying messiah, the person Jews though would bring heaven to earth. He taught that anyone could join the religion and that you could not bargain with God.
 * Greek Philosophy and Belief System-** The Greek philosophy and belief system can be described with the two men Aristotle and Plato, a Greek aristocrat, who were both secular thinkers. Aristotle was a student of Plato and had works that added to Plato’s ideas. Plato believed that someone who was more enlightened than another could not describe the enlightenment to the other. The unenlightened one would simply not understand. He thought that politics should be governed by a small group of “superior” guardians who were self-electing and qualified by heritage and education. In addition to the guardians Plato believed that all kings should be philosophers in order to end problems in the world.
 * Axial Age Creation Beliefs-** Before the axial age most explanations for existence did not have to do with making anything but reforming what was there for instance the Egyptian myths said that chaos was turned into a world with time. In the axial age creation stories were made that described things before matter. Some Greek culture describes a world of thought and feeling before matter existed. The Jews brought the most challenging as they described the universe as having a creator who always existed and formed everything from nothing.
 * Axial Age Concepts of Monotheism-** Before the Axial Age nearly all religions were polytheistic in some way whether it be the Greeks with their many gods or the Persians with only two. Judaism developed the main monotheistic belief in Hashem as their only god who was responsible for everything. Because much of Judaism was kept exclusive, this belief did not spread much until Christianity and later on Islam splintered off inviting in as many people as possible. All three of these religions share the same roots as Abrahamic religions.
 * Axial Age Concepts of Divine Love/Transience**- Because all religions favor unselfishness in some way, the idea that humans especially loved by the gods seemed to contradict that. It was not until the view of human superiority to animals arose that the divine love belief could take roots. Human superiority gave a reason for people to think the gods/ god favored them more than others. It could have first started with the Jewish faith, fitting as a way to cope with their difficult history, then branched off to Christianity and Islam, spread and become more popular.
 * Axial Age concept of divine love/transcience –> effect on beliefs about hierarchy of living beings?**
 * **Legalism/Legalists** – Han Fei, “Legalist Views on Good Government”
 * **Confucianism/Confucius and Mencius**
 * contributions to science
 * selections from The Analects
 * **Aristotle**
 * **Pythagoras –> intellectual contributions?**

The **Hippocratics** was a secular school in the late fifth century B.C.E. Greece which tried to monopalize the medical profession at the expense of rival healers who were attached to temples. It thought that health was a state of balance among four substances n the human body: blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile. By adjusting the balance you could alter the patients state of health. This idea remained quite popular in the West for years, condemning patients to treatment by diet, vomiting, laxatives, and bloodletting. Although wrong, the theory was genuinely scientific, based on observation. Most people of the time believed that illness was due to demons and spirits and gods, so the idea that illness was due to a diseased body rather than spirits was revolutionary. Hippocrates himself, the founder, pushed the idea that illness was not due to spirits and went as far as to say that “human bodies [couldn't] be polluted by a god.”
 * Rationalism** is an idea which arose during the axial age that proposed the doctrine that unaided reason could elicit truth and solve the world’s problems. Parmenides was the first known pure rationalist who was from a Greek colony of southern Italy in the early fifth century B.C.E. Drawing ideas from Pythagoras’ geometry, Parmenides suggested that objects of thought are more real than sense perception, that the world was as it was because of the ways our minds perceive it. Anything that could be thought of was real, nonexistence was an incoherent concept. Parmenides tried to prove that change was illusory and differences deceptive, that only rhe unchanging and eternal were real. A successor of Parmenides, Zeno of Elea, invented famous paradoxes to demonstrate this concept such as you can never complete a journey because you always have to cross half the remaining distance first and mater is indivisible because if you shortened a rod every day by half its length it would still have somehting left after ten thousand generations. Rationalsim helped to temper or restrain rival approaches to regulating the world- systems founded on dogma or charisma or emotion or naked power or lies. Philosophers have put forth that reason does more, that it could reshape the world, fomulate laws, and construct societies. It gave axial age thinkers a systematic way of organizing thoughts.
 * Nyaya School** was a group of people in India who commentated on ancient texts and analyzed logical processes in five-stage breakdowns that resembled Aristotle’s syllogisms and were crafted around the same time. Their conception was in one fundamental way different from Aristotle’s however. They claimed that reason was a kind of extraordianry perception that God conferred. In this way they were not truly rationalists, as they believed that meaning did not arise in the mind, but was conferred on the object of thought by God, tradition, or consensus.
 * Indian medicine**’s changes during the axial age were closely parallel to those of Greece and China. The earliest known Indian work on medicine was the Arthaveda, dating from early first millenium B.C.E. This work had the typical explanation of diseases and demons as more or less identical, treated with charms and drugs. Writing attributed to Sustra, however, in the sixth century B.C.E., pertain to medical training and more specifically surgery. Writing attributed to Charaka concentrate exclusively on diet and drugs. In essence, Indian medicine progressed from mere superstitions to scientific explanations over the course of the axial age due to the thinking of individuals and schools, much like what was happening in China and Greece during the same period.
 * Skepticism.** A consequence of the rise of a scientific point of view during the axial age was the suspicion that the world was purposeless and man insignificant. Epicures who died in 270 B.C.E. interpreted the atomic theory in way that excluded spirits and concluded that since atoms were perishable and everything was composed of them that there was no immortal soul, and in effect no Gods. He stated that Gods were imaginary, and that there was nothing to hope nor fear from them. Pyrrho of Elis, who accompanied Alexander the Great’s invasion of India in 327-324B.C.E. imitated the indifference of the naked sages e met there. He said that since you can find equally good reasons on both sides of any argument, the only wise course is to stop thinking and judge by appearances. More effective was the argument that all reasoning starts from assumption and therefore none of it is secure. Stoicism arose later in Greek philosophy, focusing on systems that concerend the best practical choices for personal happiness or for the good of society. First taught in the school of Zeno of Citium founded in Athens in the late fourth century B.C.E., stoicism started from the insight that naure is morally neutral, only human acts are good or evil. The wise man therefore achieves happiness by accepting misfortune. Fatalism and indifference are remedies for pain. Stoicism was the most effective manifestation of this idea in the west, and has therefore supplied the source of the guiding principles of the ethics of most western elites since it emerged.
 * Axial Age networks.** Axial age teachers and sages used networks to connect with the other thinkers of the age. Through these networks they were able to supply eachother with competition, discussion, denate, and emotional support. The axial age thinkers were able to communicate with eachother mainly due to connections formed by their societal involvement. For example, the thinkers fit into four main categories of types of people. They were either profestional intellectuals who sold their services as teachers, forced to seek out the patronage of rulers or positions as political advisors in order to support themselves, prophets or holy men, or leaders with visions to share and impose on their people. Many thinkers moved from patron to patron on a regular basis, spreading their ideas wherever they went. Through master-pupil relations the ideas were passed down and modified generation after generation, either allowing the student to continue his masters work or completley oppose it and form a different school. To patronize sages became a sign of wealth and power, so rulers ended up gathering thousands of sages in one place, allowing them to communicate and share their ideas with eachother. To the public sages were useful in settling political dissolution, valued for their insight and objectivity.