Page 177 - Encyclopedia Of World History Vol IV

1478 berkshire encyclopedia of world history

Politics as a sphere of human concern has typically and the social forces that generate them are probed as
been understood in two ways. In a minimalist definition, layers of social reality, as expressions of or at least re-
politics is the realm of the state, of the institution that in sponses to larger historical circumstances and processes.
complex societies enjoys a monopoly on the legitimate One example of world intellectual history is treatment
use of force in the territory it controls. Politics thus of the so-called Axial Age, the period of Eurasian history
revolves around efforts by individuals and groups to gain between roughly 800 and 600 BCE.The German philoso-
control over the state, and to exercise the state’s ultimate pher Karl Jaspers coined the term to refer to the common
power on behalf of public peace, and some interests flowering of classical thought that happened during
rather than others. This minimalist definition, dating those centuries in the major centers of civilization in the
back to the German sociologist Max Weber a century eastern Mediterranean, the Fertile Crescent, India, and
ago, tends to hold sway in contemporary political China.Whether in religious or philosophical guises, the
science. era saw the emergence of complex “second-order think-
A more substantive, traditional definition has its ori- ing,” or what one might call “thought about thought.” In
gins in classical Greek (especially Aristotelian) political contrast to the mythical worldview of earlier cultures,
theory.That view holds that politics is the highest realm new intellectual elites that had come to power began
of human affairs, the art that integrates all other pursuits. referring to transcendent sources of truth—God, natural
This means that the state, since it orders society as a law, Heaven, the Dao, and so on—that existed apart
whole, also has the ethical purpose of relating the vari- from mere tradition.With this opening of a gulf between
ous social functions and kinds of human flourishing to the mundane world and a higher order, cultures were
one another, and promoting sound character develop- reoriented away from imitating the past and toward a
ment among its citizenry. Political thought, more specif- critical engagement with the example of pioneering cre-
ically, is normative thinking that goes beyond what ative personalities: prophets, philosophers, and state
politics is to what it should be. Political thinkers put forth founders. In the political realm, the new civilizations
visions of an ideal state, against which one might mea- began measuring the realities of state and society against
sure the realities of human self-interest and power-seeking. ostensibly universal ideals of public virtue and cosmic
order. From the standpoint of world history, the Axial
World Histories of Political Age is a framework for thinking comparatively about
Thought intellectual processes that occurred almost entirely inde-
Various important points of contact lie between political pendently of one another. The overlap in timing also
thought and world history. One involves world-historical reflects common world-historical conditions, like the
treatments of how political thought has developed in dif- emergence of complex urban societies that could support
ferent settings, and how its unfolding reflects broader the kinds of stratification needed for such an intellectual
influences across space and time. Such treatments can breakthrough.
occur on the level of either history of ideas or intellectual Notably, the emergence of much of this higher-level
history. History of ideas traces the influence of thinkers thinking, especially on a political plane, involved a kind
and modes of thinking upon one another over time, of exercise in world-historical reflection. Early in the
often in isolation from larger social contexts.World his- Axial Age, two core areas that generated classical politi-
tories of ideas might deal with the transmission of doc- cal thought—the eastern Mediterranean and north-
trines over large expanses of space and time, or with the central China—were divided into many polities. Leading
influence of thinkers in different settings on one another. intellectuals like Plato and Confucius posed questions
Intellectual history, by contrast, deals more with the about politics and human flourishing in a comparative
social context and imprinting of ideas.Ways of thinking way, using the experience of often radically different