Which Axial Age, whose rituals? Habermas and Jaspers on the ‘spiritual’ situation of the present age

Abstract

Can we keep relying on sources of values dating back to the Axial Age, or do cognitive changes in the present age require a completely new foundation? An uncertainty arises with the crisis of values that can support the human in the age of artificial intelligence. Should we seek contemporary access points to the archaic origins of the species? Or must we also imagine new Anthropocenic-Axial values to reground the human event? In his most recent work, Habermas affirms the continuing importance of the contemporary access to the First Axial values, but before him Jaspers anticipates that a second cognitive revolution opens areas that may be receptive to new value foundations. Habermas’ justification of the postsecular turn may not be thinkable without Jaspers’ discovery of the postaxial imaginary.

Rituals and Algorithms: Genealogy of Reflective Faith and Postmetaphysical Thinking

“…Yet curiously, while theorizing a genealogy with one common root and two parallel and nonreducible branches of reason and faith, Habermas does not take seriously Jaspers 40 and others who anticipate the Second Axial Age. 41 Instead he harkens to archaic rituals preserved in cultic practices, witness, and faith of our contemporaries practicing the First Axial religions.…”