Note to self: never again waste time on a book whose declared subject is the "axial age." We can agree on this much: something happened to world civilization between, say 800 and 200 BC, a period which probably embraces the Buddha and Socrates and Isaiah and Confucius and suchlike. Beyond that, it's pretty much anyone's guess, in that just about anyone can bend or stretch this particular catchphrase to fit almost any reading onto almost any set of contemporaneous facts. I name no names, and I do not think I risk doing harm to the innocent because I think this complaint probably applies to anybody who ever indulged in such an enterprise.
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