Is the Modern Age a New Axial Age? The Return of Big History Paolo Costa

https://www.academia.edu/3691522/Is_the_Modern_Age_a_New_Axial_Age_The_Return_of_Big_History?rhid=42524424441&swp=rr-rw-wc-172433280&nav_from=b0b39e2f-bc22-4ec2-b9c1-cdabf2d5ae55 C. Taylor’s A Secular Age and R. Bellah’s Religion in Human Evolution have fostered the revival of metanarratives or Master Narratives after the post-modern disillusionment with metarécits and the too hasty statements about the alleged End of History. Behind this revival, one can detect the wish to reawaken the discussion on the meaning of great historical transitions (such as secularization or modernization), whose sense appears much more obscure and uncertain today than it did only few decades ago. Given that a renewal of the old unilinear and teleological philosophies of history seems implausible and not particularly promising nowadays, how can be justified this return to macrohistory? And, supposing that this theoretical warrant can be found, will it lead to a radical change in our understanding of the historical significance of the modern Western project?