التوجه الثقافي والمقاربة الحضارية

institutional regulations, but argues that it only became manifest as such in the

‘Axial Age’, roughly equated with a few centuries around the middle of the last

millennium BCE, and characterized by unprecedentedly radical changes to the

world-views of major cultural traditions. For Eisenstadt, the underlying logic of

these innovations and its translation into long-term social dynamics become the

main themes of civilizational analysis. A common denominator of ‘axial’ transformations – a new division of the world into ‘transcendental’ and ‘mundane’

levels of being – can then be invoked to justify a shift from chronological to typological criteria: changes of the axial type are no longer limited to a particular

period, but can occur in other settings. It has, however, proved difficult to sustain

the model of a common pattern, first exemplified by a period of exceptional

creativity and then replicated in other contexts, and it seems clear that the current

phase of the debate is marked by a growing emphasis on diverse constellations

during the Axial Age, as well as on the originality of later transformations. A

further point coming to the fore in these discussions is the need for a more

complex understanding of cultural patterns and developments prior to the Axial

Age. The over-generalized axial model went hand in hand with an oversimplified

view of preceding cultures – more particularly the archaic civilizations, as we may

call them – and their legacies.

None of this casts any doubt on the extraordinary importance of the Axial

Age. But in view of controversies about its meaning and its relationship to other

transformative phases, it seems inappropriate to single it out as the entry of

history into an explicitly civilizational stage. A stronger case can be made for a

third alternative: the turning-point that is often identified with the origin of

civilization tout court, but can also be seen as the first formation of different civilizational patterns (Mesopotamia and Egypt are the exemplary cases, but comparative analyses must deal with a broader spectrum). These archaic civilizations share basic components which they define, combine and develop in multiple ways.

Early patterns of statehood and urban life are defining features that differ in

specific regards from case to case; moreover, sacred rulership seems to have been

the paradigmatic form of the early state, subject to significant variations, but not

exposed to more radical challenges until later. The emergence, the inherent

problems and the later transformations of sacral rulership are linked to a broader

restructuring of relations between human and divine worlds. Finally, the invention

and use of writing – in contexts that differ across the spectrum of archaic

civilizations – represent a major cultural transformation. It paved the way for

the formation of written traditions, which became key factors of civilizational

dynamics.

One advantage of taking this set of changes as a starting-point for comparative

civilizational analysis is that it directs attention to the crucial but changing

role of writing and textuality in the cultural dynamics that set the paths as well

as the phases of world history apart from each other; and as will be seen, this

pluralistic long-term perspective also has some bearing on the question of analogies

between the text as a part and culture as a whole. These themes have not

been among the main concerns of civilizational analysts, but the argument to be

Arnason The Civilizational Approach 73

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