ABSTRACT
The ancient image of the Tower of Babel has been used by more than a few modern writers to describe current state of discourse about ethics and values. There is no one "spirit of the times", but many—too many in fact—too many competing voices, philosophies, and religions, too many points of view on moral issues, too many interpretations of even the most sacred documents, the Bibles and Constitutions. One of the stories of modern civilization is a gradual undermining of the sense of spiritual centering. The physical center of the universe was only an image of spiritual center for ancient peoples, and perhaps it was too crude an image. Writers like Alasdair MacIntyre and Huston Smith, among many others, think the answer to modern moral and spiritual confusions lies in a recovery of the basic philosophical ideas of ancient Greece or the religious traditions of East and West—China, India, Israel, and so on—that go back to the original Axial Period.
