What common problems did the new axial age religious and political concepts address? What commonalities characterize the religious and political responses to these problems?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

A. Problems during the axial age
1. nature of man as good or evil
a. political solutions
1. those that emphasize freedom, to release human goodness
2. those that emphasize discipline, to restrain human wickedness
3. politics left with the difficult task of finding the right balance between freedom and force
b. pessimistic about human evil
1. the way to overcome human deficiencies was to strengthen the state
2. censorship, repression, militarism, regimentation, extreme communism, and collectivism, selective breeding of superior human beings, austerity, rigid class structure, and active deception of the people by the state
3. political power should be concentrated in a self-electing class of philosopher-rulers
4. Legalism states that society should obey at all costs for the strength state and were suited for warring states
5. insisting on the need to suppress individualism in the interests of state unity
c. optimistic about human nature as good
1. belief in the strength in the moral and ethical parts of human nature to make individual decisions
2. political doctrines of Confucianism, for example, demanded that the state should liberate subjects to fulfill their potential
3. Greek sages advocated democracy which entrusted citizens with a voice in affairs of state
4. Indian states did have elites numbered in the hundreds—perhaps in the thousands in some cases—which ruled as a group, electing leaders for fixed terms among themselves