From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Zeitgeist (German pronunciation: [ˈtsaɪtɡaɪst] ) is "the spirit of the times" 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, sociocultural direction, and mood associated with an era.
The term zeitgeist is from German Zeit- 'time' (cognate with English tide and "time") and Geist- 'spirit' (cognate with English ghost, without being really translatable into English - this is why the German term is used).
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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.
Usage in modern English
Richard Dawkins used the term to refer to the "moral Zeitgeist" in his book The God Delusion.
The Guardian.co.uk and Instructables.com have features showing popular and trending news, topics, and articles, called Zeitgeist.Google released a categorized list of the most searched keywords of 2010 called "Google Zeitgeist"
See also
- Collective consciousness
- Meme
- Noosphere
- Social identity
- The Zeitgeist Movement
- Vox populi
