The ‘Original Sin’ in History: An Investigation into the Role of Iconoclasm as the Engine of Western History

Abstract

History has been interpreted in many ways in the past and will continue to be done so in the future. From logical play of spirits to a series of negations; from evolutionary stages to revolutionary struggles; from court histories to subaltern histories; we have seen it all. In spite of so many variations, they all revel in some kind of eschatological aims, with or without god. The aim of this paper is to look onwards from a specific epoch in history, which Karl Jaspers (1953) has referred to as the Axial Age. The Axial Age has been considered as a period of ideological and spiritual revolutions, signifying a break from the past historical trajectory. The paper argues that apart from ideological convulsions, this period also introduced a violent strain of iconoclasm that has constantly made its appearance in all historical epochs. The paper has tried to argue that these iconoclastic acts have forced the Western history or more specifically, the Abrahamic monotheistic world into a compulsive-repetitive flow of history.