Zeitgeist

The zeitgeist is the thinking and feeling ( mentality ) of age. The term refers to the character of a particular era or attempting us to realize this. The German word Zeitgeist has been taken over the English as a loanword in many other languages.

Conceptual history

As a concept creator applies the poet and philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder, who in his published writing in Riga Critical forests or considerations, the science and art of beauty on for the first time in 1769, according to recent writings of the " Zeitgeist" wrote. In this work, Herder polemic against the philologist Christian Adolph Klotz and his writing genius seculi, which was published in 1760 in Altenburg. In his work one block had been trying to develop across time tools and metrics to track the peculiarity of a particular era. The phrase genius saeculi ( " spirit of the age / century " ) was - in contrast to the genius loci ( ' spirit of the place " ) - in ancient times unknown, but already established in the early modern period and is found long before Klotz. In this respect, the term zeitgeist is also considered a German borrowing from Latin.

Popular was the phrase " spirit of the times " and the composition of "Zeitgeist " only after the French Revolution in 1789 and especially in the period of the pre-March period 1830-1848.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe leaves in the early 19th century in Faust. The first part tragedy Faust the "spirit of the times " so to rewrite ( Faust I: 575-577 ):

"What do you call the spirit of the times, This is the reason the man himself mind, In the times of bespiegeln. "

Next Goethe describes the zeitgeist with a certain societal overweight.

" If one side now is especially prominent, the amount seized and triumphs in the degree that must opposing retreat into a corner and hide for a moment in silence, it is called that overweight the zeitgeist that for a while, its essence drives. "

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel sees in the zeitgeist in the history unfolding objective spirit, cf → era ( philosophy).

" The Spiritual Situation of Our Time " is the title that in 1932 Karl Jaspers for his cultural criticism chose, in the not a zeitgeist determines the situation, but explains the history of the consideration of the presence of the Spirit of him this time.

" Something Bornierteres as the spirit does not exist. Who knows only the present, has become a zombie. "