윌버의 초인격심리학은 소위 프로이트의 심리학과 융의 심리학을 종합하여 초월한 제3의 심리학이라 한다. 그의 사상의 특징은 우리 동양 사상과 많이 접근하고 있다는 점이라 할 수 있다. 윌버는 문명을 삼원 팔소적으로 분석하고 있다. 3원이란 전분별, 분별, 초분별이 그것이다. 무속은 분명히 전분별적인 인류 문명사의 가장 원초적인 의식 구조를 만든다. 분별적 자아에서 철학이 나타난다. 소위 차축시대라는 것이 그것이다. 그러나 서양 철학의 오류는 분별적 자아가 등장할 때에 전분별적 자아 즉 무적인 자아를 말살하면서 등장했다는 데 문병사적 병이 있는 것이다. 윌버는 당연히 이는 잘못된 세계관으로 보고 3 자아가 통전되는 초인격심리학을 주장하고 있다. 한국은 세계 그 어느 곳에서도 찾아 볼 수 없는 3자아가 가장 잘균형 잡혀 있는 곳이다. 이런 의미에서 철학과 무속이 균열되어 있는 서양 풍토에서 초인격심리학이 갖는 의미는 크다 할 수 있다.
Since the term ‘Axial Age’ was first used by Karl Jaspers in 1953(English translation) in his book The Origin and Goal of History,18) it has become controversial and problematic among academic circles. The Axial Age is period between the 8th and 2nd centuries B.C.E., when almost all the great cultural heros, like Socrates and Plato in Greece, Buddha in India, and Confucius and LaoTzu in China, were born. Nobody will disagree on the importance of the Axial Age but his interpretation and understanding of the age is problematic. So, I am critical on his Axial Age theory in the following two points : his misinterpretation of Axial age and his misunderstanding of Northeast Asian history. I will discuss these two points from the feministic and Korean perspectives in this article. In summary, he was not aware of feministic critique of the axial age and didn’t know of the new archaeological discoveries of the Northeast Asian area. For me, the Axial Age he mentioned is nothing but the second stage of whole span of axial age but I agree on the importance of the Axial Age. Jaspers failed to acknowledge the role of gender in evaluating the Axial Age. He was not sensitive to the question of why all the great characters that appeared in the Axial Age were men and not women. It is possible that Jaspers, when he was writing The Origin and Goal of History, might not have been conscious of feminist issues. The Axial Age was an era where individualistic male selves, with the weapon of reason, posited themselves in the center of the stage of history. When viewed in the light of the problem of ‘clash of gender’ instead of clash of civilization, the Axial Age occured not in B.C.E 200-800 but rather around B.C.E 2000. The religion scholar M. Eliade asserts that ‘2000 B.C.E.’ is Illo tempore or ‘a primordial time.’ To understand why this period is so important, we must turn our attention to mythology. When the myths that appear in this era are observed, it can be seen that it is almost unanimously the case that the male gods of heaven murder the goddesses of the earth. The Greek heavenly god Zeus kills the earthly goddess Chaos’ grandson Typhon, the Babylonian male god Marduk kills the goddess Tiamat, and the Indian male god Indra kills the goddess Vritra. In Babylon, the incident where Marduk appears and kills Tiamat, is called ‘Ennuma Ellish’. The phenomena of gods killing goddesses is also disclosed in the form of cosmogony, and the Genesis account of creation in the Old Testament can be understood as an extension of such incidents as Ennuma Ellish. ‘2000 B.C.E.’ was a period where city-states and powerful patriarch regimes appeared with the use of bronze. Therefore, there is an intimate relationship between bronze, city-states and patriarch systems. In her book, Chalice and Blade, R. Eisler posits that the symbol of this era is the bronze blade. The appearance of the bronze blade symbolizes the appearance of a new era and the dissolution of the period of Neolithic, agriculture and matriarchal rule that in turn is symbolized by the chalice (Eisler, 1988, xiii). The actual turn of the axis was at this stage, and the Axial Age that Jaspers endeavors to depict is only an extension of what happened in this era. The answer to the question of why the main characters like Socrates, Plato, Buddha, and Confucius and others are all masculine, is that the Axial Age is actually a part of the previous history, especially the appearance of the gods with the disappearance of the goddesses around 2000 B.C.E.