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Why did argument appear in Greece, India, China and Israel in the same few centuries?

Javier Morales Fellow
· 5 replies · 164 views
HistoryChineseGreek & RomanIndianMohismConfuciusMoziThalesThe Buddha#axial-age#explanation#political-competition#urbanisation
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I'm an economist, so when someone shows me a pattern I want a mechanism. Granting for the moment that something similar happened in several regions between roughly 800 and 200 BCE, with no documented transmission between them, the explanations I've seen are:

  1. Material surplus. Iron-age agriculture freed a class from subsistence. But surplus existed earlier and elsewhere without this result.
  2. Literacy. Writing lets later generations criticise a fixed text. But writing is far older than the pattern.
  3. Political competition. Rival states create a market for advisers and a reason to argue. Fits China and Greece; India less clearly.
  4. Urbanisation and trade. Cities bring incompatible worldviews into contact and force justification. Plausible, hard to test.
  5. Imperial disruption. Collapsing orders force reconstruction from scratch. Fits Israel and China, strains for Greece.
  6. Psychological development. Something changed in human self-understanding. Unfalsifiable as usually stated.

None commands agreement, and several are compatible. I'd like people who know particular regions to tell me which mechanisms fit their case and which don't. And whether anyone has proposed a way to test them.

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5 answers

  1. Chen Yuting

    Fellow

    For China, political competition fits remarkably well. In the Warring States period advisers travelled between courts offering doctrines to rulers who needed ways to survive. The state of Qi supported scholars at the Jixia academy. Confucius himself spent years wandering between states looking for a ruler to employ him. A market for persuasion produces arguments, and Mohists, Confucians and Legalists were competing for the same clients.

    Helpful · 2
  2. Meera Kulkarni

    Fellow

    For India, urbanisation looks stronger than competition. The period of the Buddha and Mahāvīra coincides with the growth of cities and states in the Ganges valley. The Pali texts are full of wandering ascetics and teachers holding rival views, debating in halls built for the purpose. There were kingdoms and republics, but the debaters weren't mainly advisers seeking employment; they were renouncers seeking followers. Same effect, different market.

    Helpful · 3
  3. Giulia Ferrante

    Fellow

    For Greece there's an interesting version of explanation 4. Richard Seaford has argued that the spread of coined money in the Greek cities, from around the sixth century, shaped early Greek thought: a single abstract substance underlying everything is what money is in an economy. It's contested, and I'm not fully convinced, but it's the kind of specific, testable mechanism Javier wants. Thales was a Milesian, and Miletus was a trading city.

  4. Kwame Asante

    Fellow

    A caution before choosing. Every mechanism on the list comes from European social theory, and the pattern itself is defined by surviving written texts. Akan argument happened in oral settings, in councils and proverbs, and left nothing for a historian of the period to count. Before asking why argument appeared in four places, we might ask whether we've only counted the places where it was written down.

    Helpful · 1
  5. Javier Morales

    Fellow

    This is very helpful. My summary: competition fits China, urbanisation fits India, money and trade may fit Greece, and imperial disruption fits Israel. That suggests no single mechanism, but a common condition, more people meeting rival views and needing to justify their own, reached by different routes. Kwame's point stands as a warning about the data. And I agree “psychological development” should be dropped unless someone can say what would count against it.

    Helpful · 2