Zeitgeist

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This article is about the German word. For other articles using that word see Zeitgeist (disambiguation).

Template:Wiktionary Template:Audio is originally a German expression that means "the spirit (Geist) of the time (Zeit)". It denotes the intellectual and cultural climate of an era. The German pronunciation of the word is Template:IPA (IPA).

The concept of Zeitgeist goes back to the German philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder, 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 (German Wikipedia article) and introduced the word Zeitgeist into German as a translation of genius seculi (Latin: genius - "guardian spirit" and saeculi - "of the century").

Zeitgeist has achieved a unique status among German loanwords in other tongues, having found an entrance into English, Spanish, Dutch and even Japanese.

It is a term that refers to the ethos of a cohort of people, that spans one or more subsequent generations, who despite their diverse age and socio-economic background experience a certain worldview, which is prevalent at a particular period of socio-cultural progression. Zeitgeist is the experience of a dominant cultural climate that defines, particularly in Hegelian thinking, an era in the dialectical progression of a people or the world at large. According to Hegel, the Zeitgeist always incarnated itself in a specific Volksgeist ("Volk" meaning "people"), which itselfs was personalized by an individual hero, symbolized by Napoleon. Once the hero's mission was accomplished, history would abandon it as a dry shell, and the Zeitgeist be transferred to another Volksgeist, where another hero would emerge to complete the unfolding of the spiritual Being in history itself.

1 Quotations
2 In popular culture
3 Google Zeitgeist
4 See also
5 External links

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Quotations

Whoever marries the zeitgeist will be a widower soon. - August Everding (German Wikipedia article)

Opinions, that deviate from the ruling zeitgeist, always aggravate the crowd. - Germaine de Stael

The product of paper and printed ink, that we commonly call the book, is one of the great visible mediators between spirit and time, and, reflecting zeitgeist, lasts as long as ore and stone. - Johann Georg Hamann

Don't take any shit from the zeitgeist. - comedian George Carlin

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In popular culture

One of the first songs by Manic Street Preachers bassist and main lyricist Nicky Wire, which was available to the fans on the band's website, is called "I Killed The Zeitgeist".