NP? modernity, terrorism, truth and relevance? CORRECTED

[Kai Frederik Lorentzen]

Armstrong:

"There was a similar transitional period in the ancient world, lasting 
roughly from 700 to 200 BCE, which historians have called the Axial Age 
because it was pivotal to the spiritual development of humanity."

Not correct. It weren't historians yet the philosopher Karl Jaspers (see 
/Vom Ursprung und Ziel der Geschichte/) who minted the term Achsenzeit 
in 1949. And in later years the concept attracted rather social 
scientists (like Eisenstadt) than historians to whom the concept must 
appear highly speculative.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axial_Age

An actual historian who thought a lot about this kind of concept in 
order to shed new light on modernity was Reinhart Koselleck who 
developed the term 'saddle time' (Sattelzeit) for the period between 
1750 and 1850. Sounds M&Dish, right?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinhart_Koselleck
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sattelzeit

On 20.04.2013 22:23, alice wellintown wrote:
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/a/armstrong-battle.html
> On Saturday, April 20, 2013, Mark Kohut wrote:
>
>     " But all of our experience suggests that it is not
>     “fundamentalism” alone but an aching tension between modernity and
>     a false picture of a purer fundamentalist past that makes terrorists."
>     This is Adam Gopnick in The New Yorker today about the marathon
>     bombers. Does this apply to any of P's characters in AtD?
>     Does this apply to P's vision? Is Hume's condemning what she sees
>     as P's moral failure in Against the Day, refuted, or attempted
>     to be seen (refuted) by P's vision of the cohesion of life in
>     the Olde Europe scenes---the communities of the villages?
>     Or, a few have remarked that DeLillo best captured the meanings
>     and understandings of the characters in our recent acts of local
>     terror. True, where?
>     You can answer this question instead.
>     Extra credit for both.
>
>

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