"The position men have given to Jesus is a position of authority. It characterizes themselves. It cannot alter the eternal facts. Great is the soul, and plain. It is no flatterer, it is no follower; it never appeals from itself. It always believes in itself." Emerson, 'the Oversoul'

"Dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme liberty." Plato, Republic

The Great Transformation is a great intro to the ancient world. Its argument, however, treats its subjects with facile interpretations and an affected taste for the grandiose in religion--if it is remotely masculine, it is primitive backwards and evil (i.e. natural, empirical, scientific, reasoned), and if it is pacifistic, nihilistic or paternalistic, it is good (i.e. sublime, sycophantic, pity evoking, 'civic' ect.) Of course, the author is not above contradicting herself to push her existentially schizophrenic views on the ancients in relation to these tastes.

The main problem with her treatment of the main concept of Ahimsa in her thesis is that it is not only appropriated from Karl Jaspers "Axial Philosophers", it is a blatant distortion and misrepresentation of it. I quote here from Jaspers' section on the Buddha:

"Accordingly, the Buddhist monks were ENJOINED TO TRUTHFULLNESS both in their deepsest thoughts and in the actions and words of everyday life. They were further enjoined to be chaste, to abstain from intoxicating drink, not to steal, NOT TO HARM AN LIVING CREATURE (AHIMSA), and to observe the four modes of inner conduct: loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, equanimity toward the impure and the evil."
--All caps are my own.

In Armstrong's formula, ahimsa is not only the antipode of violence but also against aristocracy, nobility, passion, reason/logic, science ect.; these are not only bad, but moreover EVIL. What is more, by implication these are what the modern world is in excess of according to her, and the source of such horrors as genocide, racism, chauvinism, people watching television for too many hours, school shootings et al. The logic is impeccable, but gives no insight into the eras discussed, rather, to Armstrong, history is to be read as an exegesis of the present: an exercise in intellectual narcissism of the first order.

On the contrary, her distortion of ahimsa as total rejection of violence is an ultimately indefensible ethical position: pacifism requires one to look on as a neighbor is robbed, a spouse raped, one's self beaten. It precludes the duty of self-defense and mutual aid in the service thereof at the price of Liberty. Armstrong is demanding annihilation over Liberty, annihilation as liberty, the ancient nihilist formula. A simple examination between aristocratically or monarchically lead rebellions and mob incited ones in history demonstrates which side has less in the ways of ethical principles, respect for human life ect. Mass wave attacks, guillotines and clamor for privilege vs. careful planning, a desire for liberty and the will to protect it for one's self and one's neighbors. Plato was right, Armstrong needs to stop tracing shadows.

Synopsis:
The leaps in logic are Evil Kieneval worthy but not unexpected coming from a existential farce pusher, who fails to extirpate the dangers perceived, let alone pose them coherently, whereas she does succeeds to promote every Myth that constitute the problems of which she is so superficially aware of and incapable of articulating. For example, non-violence means to Armstrong, that the Greeks were violent egotists who wasted their time being agonal and engaging in stuffy rational discourse; their establishment of science and philosophy, art and culture were O.K. Therefore, Buddhists and Confucians were more ethical. Lao Tzu was very significant, but since he more or less presented a system of metaphysics, ethics and epistemology different from Confucious, so he really is inferior to Confucious since he had more 'social conscience' [class conscious you mean?]. From this, early Judea was not a rabble of tribes but an advanced civilization, who established the foundation of Western Civilization [everywhere else, an oxymoron to proletarian Armstrong] because the apologist for their violent excursions and war deity Yahweh was Jesus, and Jesus was great. Plato and Aristotle tried, but since they believed ocholcracy was dangerous and supported other forms of social organization, they were tyrants and tyrants [individuals, e.g. Socrates] are enemies of the people. There are no such things as Ancient Egypt or Babylon.

The book's coherence hangs not so much by a thread, than as by levitation. The ethical insights are banal and platitudinous. The purpose of the book is not history or even a period of ethical discovery; it's the pedantic sermonizing of a snob telling you what you ought to believe and think about such things.

The Great Transformation is not about the ancient world, it is an extended justification of Armstrong's snobbish and puddle-shallow bourgeois spirituality interspersed with monumental ethical pretensions. The narrative exists solely as the means an indictment against aspects of the world that affirm ethical world views other than her own, which are in the main an eclectic collection of guileless and shameless pacifistic, nihilistic and fatalistic platitudes; these profound mores establish her place in the world of letters as educator and shepherd. "Bravo" --Still, plenty of heads will nod.

A final joke which runs counter to everything in The Great Transformation:
Q: Who are the greatest figures in Western history?
A: Jesus and Socrates, of course.
Q: Who killed Jesus and Socrates?
A: Democracy killed Jesus and Socrates.

The Great transformation ignores the single most important ethical question of the era as lived and died for by Jesus and Socrates: man vs the mob, liberty vs security, freedom vs equality (slavery). Armstrong either choses not to see this great bifurcation that runs through the history of human civilization that sacrifices man for ideals and mobs, or she herself is a crypto-advocate of the latter--via pacifism (Lay down and die.)

"The reliance on authority measures the decline of religion, the withdrawal of the soul." Emerson, "the Oversoul"
Armstrong asks us to rely on the authority of the so called Axials, when the future of mankind rests on the actions of morally autonomous agents ethically independent of ideology and dogma.

"Your silence gives consent."
--Plato

I really, really wanted to like this book. Its premise is compelling; during the so-called "Axial Age"--that is, from 1600 to 900 BC--world events led to the rise of four great religious traditions: the development of Confucianism and Daoism in China, Hinduism and Buddhism in India, monotheism in Israel, and philosophical rationalism in Greece. Earlier beliefs that the gods (plural) were to be worshipped for their ability to bring bounty to a particular people or to assist them in territorial warfare evolved to the point where other-directed love and service, empathy, and compassion became the most important considerations. Because this is my own personal ethos, I was interested to understand the historical context that gave birth to such thinking. But Armstrong is a religious scholar; in her quest for comprehensive accuracy, she bogs down in too many details that are irrelevant to the lay reader. (A psychologist might call her obsessive-compulsive or at least note that she would be an "over-incorporator" in Rorschach terms.) A Reader's Digest condensed version of this tome would have been welcome. But I became stuck around page 274, unable to trudge through the next 200 pages to the end. Pity, as I was just starting to get to the good stuff. But her accounting of too many tribal migrations and temple desecrations had killed off my interest by then.

It started off badly when the narrative began with the notion that once upon a time proto-Aryans lived peacefully and justly until etc.

I found the historic events described to support the "axial" thesis rather selective, and the manner of their interpretation contrived.

Not an honest historical account.

Extremely well-written record of the Axial ages, of the Axial people and the Axial spirituality. This book traces the history of the Aryans, the vedic people in India; the Greeks and their times; the Jews and their spirituality and rituals; the Chinese people and their history. This book is the precursor of Karen Armstrong's book "The history of God".
See my detailed review at [..]

Karen Armstrong, a commentator and historian of the world's religions, adds to her writings another interesting exploration of the roots and origins of the world's faiths. In this study, Armstrong in particular examines the crucial period originally called the 'Axial Age' by the existentialist thinker and theologian Karl Jaspers, though updated to reflect the new findings by historians and archeaologists about the origins of the world's major faiths. Armstrong examines the founders of the Semitic, Chinese, Greek and Indian religions and their underlying current of the need to curtail and restrain violence and develop the emotional capacity for compassion for the other, in the face of the often great brutality that plagued the world in that time period.

Armstrong ends by arguing the message of the founders of the world's religious traditions still have relevance today, particularly in the disturbing trends of increasing selfishness, violence and greed that seem to mark a globalised, capitalist world. While the apocalyptic tone of some of Armstrong's fears go a bit over the top, I think her careful scholarship does tell us something important about the origins of religions and the role they have to play in our emotional life.