Final Essay Question
Please read the questions below carefully. Answer all the questions in a single essay format using
supporting evidence from lectures, secondary sources and primary sources. All the questions are
interrelated. Your answer must have an introduction, body and conclusion.
In 1949, the German historian Karl Jaspers coined the term Axial Age. The term’s origin, and the origin
of the idea behind it, was developed by Jaspers when he noticed that significant parts of Eurasia in the
period dating from c. 800-100 B.C.E. experienced a major transition in human thought. More
specifically, Jaspers saw the Axial Age as a period when new religious traditions and philosophical
thought that greatly differed from previous ones were developed, traditions and systems that have been
greatly elaborated since their inception and are still with us today. According to Jaspers, what were the
characteristics that defined the Axial Age and its traditions and how did these characteristics differ from
traditions that came before? What were the key characteristics that defined Confucianism, Buddhism, and
Judaism? How might one argue that these traditions (Confucianism, Buddhism, and Judaism) were
reflective of the Axial Age? Can the text below be used to help explain why Greek philosophy falls within
the scope of the Axial Age?
Aristotle – Metaphysics
Such and so many are the notions, then, which we have about Wisdom and the wise. Now of these
characteristics that of knowing all things must belong to him who has in the highest degree universal
knowledge; for he knows in a sense all the instances that fall under the universal. And these things, the
most universal, are on the whole the hardest for men to know; for they are farthest from the senses.
And the most exact of the sciences are those which deal most with first principles; for those which
involve fewer principles are more exact than those which involve additional principles, e.g. arithmetic
than geometry. But the science which investigates causes is also instructive, in a higher degree, for the
people who instruct us are those who tell the causes of each thing. And understanding and knowledge
pursued for their own sake are found most in the knowledge of that which is most knowable (for he
who chooses to know for the sake of knowing will choose most readily that which is most truly
knowledge, and such is the knowledge of that which is most knowable); and the first principles and the
causes are most knowable; for by reason of these, and from these, all other things come to be known,
and not these by means of the things subordinate to them. And the science which knows to what end
each thing must be done is the most authoritative of the sciences, and more authoritative than any
ancillary science; and this end is the good of that thing, and in general the supreme good in the whole
of nature. Judged by all the tests we have mentioned, then, the name in question falls to the same
science; this must be a science that investigates the first principles and causes; for the good, i.e. the end,
is one of the causes.
