Zeitgeist
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- This article is about the German word. For other articles using that word see Zeitgeist (disambiguation).
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The concept of Zeitgeist goes back to Johann Gottfried Herder and other German Romantics, 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"). The German Romantics, habitually tempted to reduce the past to essences, treated the Zeitgeist as a historical character in its own right, rather than a mere conceptual instrument.
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 itself 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 would be transferred to another Volksgeist, where another hero would emerge to complete the unfolding of the spiritual Being in history itself.
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
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".
- Is the password for Gunther Hermann's E-mail account in the computer game Deus Ex.
- Is the name of an album by [The Levellers]
- Is one of San Francisco's most popular counter cultural bars and gathering places.
- Zeitgeist was a famous playboy superhero with the power to project an acid as a weapon from his mouth in the Marvel comics X-Force and X-StatiX.
- The website 43things.com has a section called zeitgeist.
- The O.C's Seth Cohen has made reference to a 'cultural zeitgeist' when describing how his 'super holiday' "Chrismukkah" will sweep the nation.
- In Sex and the City, Carrie's boyfriend Vaughn has a father who teaches a class on Cultural Zeitgeist at Columbia University and invites Carrie to speak at his class, as he views her as a cultural icon.
- The Google Current segments on Al Gore's Current TV end with the statement, "Zeitgeist Data Provided by Google".
See also
External links
- [Christian Adolph Klotz]
- [Christian Adolf Klotz] in: Meyers Konversations-Lexikon, 4. Aufl., 1888, Vol. 9, Page 859
- [Genius seculi blog] ( German php blog )
- [Google Zeitgeist]
- [Zeitgeist Web Comic]
- redirect[[Template:Portal]]
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