Includes bibliographical references and index.

Fundamental questions. The Axial Age debate as religious discourse / Hans Joas -- What was the Axial revolution? / Charles Taylor -- An evolutionary approach to culture : implications for the study of the Axial Age / Merlin Donald -- Embodiment, transcendence, and contingency : anthropological features of the Axial Age / Matthias Jung -- The Axial Age in global history : cultural crystallizations and societal transformations / Björn Wittrock -- The Buddha's meditative trance : visionary knowledge, aphoristic thinking, and Axial Age rationality in early Buddhism / Gananath Obeyesekere -- The idea of transcendence / Ingolf U. Dalferth -- A comparative perspective. Religion, the Axial Age, and secular modernity in Bellah's theory of religious evolution / José Casanova -- Where do Axial commitments reside? : problems in thinking about the African case / Ann Swidler -- The Axial Age theory : a challenge to historism or an explanatory device of civilization analysis? : with a look at the normative discourse in Axial Age China / Heiner Roetz -- Destructive possibilities? The Axial conundrum between transcendental visions and vicissitudes of their institutionalizations : constructive and destructive possibilities / Shmuel N. Eisenstadt -- Axial religions and the problem of violence / David Martin -- Righteous rebels : when, where, and why? / W.G. Runciman -- Reevaluations. Rehistoricizing the Axial Age / Johann P. Arnason -- Cultural memory and the myth of the Axial Age / Jan Assmann -- Perspectives on the future. The Axial invention of education and today's global knowledge culture / William M. Sullivan -- The future of transcendence : a sociological agenda / Richard Madsen -- The heritage of the Axial Age : resource or burden? / Robert N. Bellah.

Description based on online resource; title from .pdf information screen (Ebsco, viewed November 6, 2012).