Zeitgeist

For other uses, see Zeitgeist (disambiguation).

Zeitgeist (German pronunciation: [ˈtsaɪtɡaɪst] ) (from German Zeit-time and Geist- spirit) is "the spirit of the times" and/or "the spirit of the age." Zeitgeist is the general cultural, intellectual, ethical, spiritual, and/or political climate within a nation or even specific groups, along with the general ambience, morals, and sociocultural direction or mood of an era (similar to the English word mainstream or trend).

Origins

The concept of Zeitgeist goes back to Johann Gottfried Herder and other German Romanticists such as Cornelius Jagdmann, but is best known in relation to Hegel's philosophy of history. In 1769 Herder wrote a critique of the work Genius seculi by the philologist Christian Adolph Klotz and introduced the word Zeitgeist into German as a translation of genius seculi (Latin: genius - "guardian spirit" and saeculi - "of the century").

The German Romanticists habitually attempted to reduce the past to essences and treated the Zeitgeist as a historical character in its own right, rather than a generalized description for an era.

See also

• Collective consciousness
• Meme
• Noosphere
• Vox populi
• Social identity
• The Zeitgeist Movement

External links

• Christian Adolph Klotz
• Christian Adolf Klotz in: Meyers Konversations-Lexikon, 4. Aufl., 1888, Vol. 9, Page 859
• Zeitgeist, History of Ideas

References

Zeitgeist. (n.d.) The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. (2003). Retrieved August 7 2009 from [1]