Great transformation through the prism of axial time

   This monograph makes an effort to locate and analyze the array of tectonic upheavals in the infrastructure of the modern world, which make it possible to allege that at present humankind is living through an axial age of its kind, in which all values are being reappraised, and a paradigm shift is taking place in world perception, world order and the way that nations build their lives.   

Using historical civilizations as an example – Greco-Roman, the European Middle Ages and capitalist society – the authors show that civilization, by feeding on its internal vital or life energy, went through the stages of formation and further development according to this formula: “Birth-ascent-flourishment-demise, and then became an artefact of history, giving way to the next type of civilization. 

In this context, an analysis has been made of the nature of key factors and main vectors for similar processes and trends in the information and communication revolution, globalization, in the increased pace of social time, and the narrowing-down of sorts of global space, to name a few. 

The author fully backs up the premise that the modern world has stepped into a qualitatively new stage in its development, that it has radically transformed, and that there is a new Axial Age connected to vast metamorphoses of an existential nature, which may take precedence over the transition from paganism to new world-religions, or from the Middle Ages to a rational capitalist civilization in a Euro Atlantic world. 

For specialists in history, politics, geopolitics. For undergraduates and phD students reading social, political and human sciences. Also for a wide circle of readers interested in the upheavals which are dramatically changing the face of the modern world.