The Origins and Diversity of Axial Age Civilizations

I. The Emergence of Second-order Thinking in Classical Greece

CHAPTER l The Emergence of Second-order Thinking in Classical Greece YEHUDA ELKANA Understanding is an unsought condition; we inexorably inhabit a world of intelligibles. But understanding as an engagement is an exertion; it is the resolve to inhabit an ever more intelligible, or an ever less mysterious world. This unconditional engagement of understanding I shall call 'theorizing'. It is an engagement to abate mystery rather than to achieve definite understanding. 1 The conscious resolve to demystify the world is not only about the world; it is also an effort to guide one's thoughts: it is thinking about thinking. This is what we call second-order thinking. People in all cultures 'think'. Not all 'thinking', whether it is about the world, or society, or the affairs of the individual, is second-order. The body of knowledge in any area-primitive cosmology or General Relativity-as long as it consists of thoughts about the world, is not second-order thinking. All 'images of knowledge'2, i.e. our thoughts about knowledge, are second-order thinking. In my theoretical work I have tried to eliminate the inviting and tempting belief in linear development, as if second-order thinking were a highly developed form of consciousness which follows only after the highest achievements in first-order thinking. This in itself is a meta-level view, since any ordering of thought according to degrees of sophistication, complexity or achievement, is already second-order thinking. All we can say is that when we reflect about our theories of the world, i.e. about the 'body of knowledge' in any area, we find, in terms of our images of knowledge, that some of them are very sophisticated, some others very primitive, and yet both can be totally unreflective-purely firstorder . 40 Emergence of Second-order Thinking in Classical Greece 41 Now we ask a whole series of questions-all second-order:3 a. Is second-order thinking a hallmark of only some cultures or of all? b. What is the relation between the transcendental breakthrough of the Axial Age civilizations and the emergence of secondorder thinking? c. In which bodies of knowledge and in which social context do we wake up first to the need of reflective ordering in a corpus through images of knowledge? d. What are the mutual influences between bodies of knowledge, images of knowledge, and normative ideologies? e. Are the carriers of the body of knowledge the same elites who carry the second-order thinking in society? a. This is a bone ofcontention among relativist and realist thinkers. For me it is difficult to imagine any culture that does not reflect, ever, about its own thoughts. Even saying that our 'theory' or 'belief, "that the sun is swallowed up every night by a demon and is being reborn next morning" is a beautiful myth or a frightening fact, is an image of knowledge and it approximates second-order thinking. The real issue, therefore, arises when such images of knowledge are systematically applied to a corpus of beliefs or theories about any subject, and especially in the reflective question about their truthvalue . Is there a culture which does not raise the question whether its medical beliefs are true? Probably not. Therefore the emphasis will shift to the systematic nature of reflexive questioning. Is it the case that in every culture there is a conscious attempt to apply systematically a corpus of thought about thinking to a body of knowledge? Probably not. b. Almost by definition, if we accept the validity of the still somewhat unexplained phenomenon that during the Axial Age a number of civilizations underwent critical change more or less simultaneously and with no clear mutual influence on each other, and that the breakthrough:; are characterized by a "strain toward transcendentalism ," by creating a gap or tension between that newly created transcendental realm and the mundane,4 by an urgent need to bridge that tension, and by the emergence of new elites with autonomous norms which will serve as the bridge, THEN the very strain toward transcendentalism is second-order. c. + d. The more elaborate a corpus of views or theories about the world or society or the gods or the individual becomes, the more indispensable will become the criteria of choice between competing or contradictory views, between emerging alternatives. Awareness of alternatives is an invitation to second-order thinking. The more 42 Y. ELKANA numerous these alternatives are, the more elaborate they are, the more natural it becomes that reflexive...