ABSTRACT
In the Western tradition, reason has been at the heart of politics since Plato suggested that knowledge of the forms through rational argument is necessary properly to order relations within the polity. Of equal importance is recognising that the human soul requires cognition of the Good – the form of all forms and the ‘author of all things’ (Republic 508 E, 511 B, 516 B, in Plato 1937, 769, 772, 775) – in order to lead a virtuous life in the pursuit of both individual and mutual flourishing (eudaimonia). Of course, this vision is not limited to ancient Greek political thought. As Karl Jaspers (1953) first argued in his seminal work on the Axial Age (Achsenzeit or ‘axis time’), the great metaphysics of East and West are of a single birth with the main world religions: the strangely coincident fusion of philosophy with theology in the period from around the eighth to the second century BC (Bellah 2011; Bellah and Joas 2011). Arguably, this Axial Age witnessed the emergence of similar patterns of thinking that have underpinned the civilisations of the West, Persia, India and China ever since. The fusion of religious belief with rational enquiry centred on a theoretical and practical critique of predominant norms of absolutist power underwritten by gods who were not believed to be on the side of ordinary human beings. Thus, the advent of critical thought and political resistance was from the outset
inextricably intertwined with an appeal to religious transcendence – whether in Plato, Buddha or Confucius.
