Myth, Modernity, and the Legacy of the Axial Age: Taylor, Habermas, Assmann, and Jaspers

Abstract: This article analyzes the legacy of the idea of an Axial Age with a particular focus on Habermas, Taylor, Assmann, and Jaspers. I ask what has motivated the use of the concept and illustrate the ways in which it is situated in the twentieth-century debate on myth. I then respond to the limitations of the concept’s legacy and turn to two overlooked elements of Jaspers’s initial intervention: In contrast to the dominant discourse, he argued that myth changed its form and was not replaced by logos; he also argued that the Axial Age failed rather than succeeded.