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This article is about the German word. For other uses, see Zeitgeist (disambiguation).


Zeitgeist (pronounced ] (helpinfo)) is originally a German expression that means "the spirit of the age", literally translated as "time (Zeit) spirit (Geist)". It describes the intellectual and cultural climate of an era. In German, the word has more layers of meaning than the English translation, including the fact that Zeitgeist can only be observed for past events.

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

Origins

The concept of Zeitgeist goes back to Johann Gottfried Herder and other German Romantics 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 Romantics, habitually tempted to reduce the past to essences, treated the Zeitgeist as an historical character in its own right, rather than a generalized description for an era.

Definitions

"Zeitgeist" refers to the ethos of a select group of people, that express a particular (predominantly post-modern) world view, 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. Hegel's main contribution to the formulation of the concept of Volksgeist is the attribution of a historical character to the concept. The spirit of a nation is one of the manifestations of "World Spirit" (Weltgeist). That Spirit is essentially alive and active throughout mankind's history. Now, the spirit of a nation is an intermediate stage of world history as the history of the World Spirit. The World Spirit gives impetus to the realization of the historical spirits of various nations (''Volksgeister').

The spirits of individual nations are both the articulations (Gliederungen) of an organization and its realization. The spirits of individual nations represent a segment of the World Spirit out of which emerges the unlimited universal spirit. A comparison is introduced here between the status of an individual and that of a nation's spirit. In the process of his formation the individual undergoes various changes without, however, losing his identity. As a part of world history, a nation—exhibiting a certain trend expressed in its Volksgeist— plays its part in the total process of world history. But once it contributes its share to world history it can no longer play a role in the process of world history. The submersion in the total process prevents a people's cultural rebirth, because it has exhausted its creativity in the historical growth of its guiding spirit. It is for this reason that one of Hegel's disciples, Michelet, considered the idea of a renaissance of the Jewish people as philosophically impossible.

Quotations

  • Whoever marries the zeitgeist will be a widower soon. - August Everding
  • Opinions, that deviate from the ruling zeitgeist, always aggravate the crowd. - Germaine de Staël
  • 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
  • Ohh, spirit of the age - crusher, Peter Godfrey
  • Don't take any shit from the zeitgeist. - comedian George Carlin
  • You exist in the Zeitgeist with a cane, sir. - Debbie DeLaguardia, speaking to president Bartlet in the seventh season of The West Wing.
  • Jittery Zeitgeist wither by the watering hole. - Aesop Rock from his track None Shall Pass on his recently released album, None Shall Pass.

References

See also

External links

Zeitgeist is a German expression meaning "the spirit (Geist) of the time (Zeit)". It denotes the intellectual and cultural climate of an era.

Zeitgeist may also refer to:
  • Zeitgeist Films, an American independent film company

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German phonology describes the phonology of Standard German.

Since German is a pluricentric language, there are a number of different pronunciations of standard German which however agree in most respects.
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German language (Deutsch, ] (help info ) ) is a West Germanic language and one of the world's major languages.
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The English word "spirit" comes from the Latin "spiritus" ("breath").

Etymology

The English word "spirit" comes from the Latin spiritus, meaning "breath" (compare spiritus asper
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Geist is a German word that does not translate very well into English. It is usually translated as mind, spirit, or even ghost but can also be associated with drive or motivation. Some English translators resort to using "spirit-mind" to help convey the meaning of the term.
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Era may refer to:
  • Era, a long period of history
  • ERA Real Estate, also known as Electronic Realty Associates Inc.
  • Era (musical project), founded by Eric Levi
  • Era (telecommunications), the brand name of Poland's mobile phone network operator, PTC

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A loanword (or loan word) is a word directly taken into one language from another with little or no translation. By contrast, a calque or loan translation is a related concept whereby it is the meaning or idiom that is borrowed rather than the lexical item itself.
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English}}} 
Writing system: Latin (English variant) 
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Official language of: 53 countries
Regulated by: no official regulation
Language codes
ISO 639-1: en
ISO 639-2: eng
ISO 639-3: eng  
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 Spanish, Castilian}}} 
Writing system: Latin (Spanish variant)
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ISO 639-1: none
ISO 639-2: —
ISO 639-3: —

Spanish (
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This article contains Japanese text.
Without proper ,
you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of kanji or kana.

Japanese
日本語
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Johann Gottfried von Herder (August 25, 1744 in Mohrungen (Morąg), Kingdom of Prussia - December 18, 1803 in Weimar) was a German philosopher, poet, and literary critic. He is associated with the periods of Enlightenment, Storm and Stress, and Weimar Classicism.
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Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (IPA: [ˈgeɔʁk ˈvɪlhɛlm ˈfʁiːdʁɪç ˈheːgəl]
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Philosophy of history or historiosophy is an area of philosophy concerning the eventual significance, if any, of human history. Furthermore, it speculates as to a possible teleological end to its development—that is, it asks if there is a design, purpose, directive
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Philology, etymologically, is the "love of words". It is most accurately defined as "an affinity toward the learning of the backgrounds as well as the current usages of spoken or written methods of human communication".
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Latin}}} 
Official status
Official language of: Vatican City
Used for official purposes, but not spoken in everyday speech
Regulated by: Opus Fundatum Latinitas
Roman Catholic Church
Language codes
ISO 639-1: la
ISO 639-2: lat
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Ethos (ἦθος, ἔθος) (plurals: ethe, ethea) is a Greek word originally meaning "accustomed place" (as in
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Postmodernism is a term applied to a wide-ranging set of developments in critical theory, philosophy, architecture, art, literature, and culture, which are generally characterized as either emerging from, in reaction to, or superseding, modernism.
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A world view (or worldview) is a term calqued from the German word Weltanschauung (] (help) ) Welt
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In classical philosophy, dialectic (Greek: διαλεκτική) is controversy, Viz., the exchange of arguments and counter-arguments respectively advocating propositions (theses) and counter-propositions
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Oceania
Africa
Asia

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August Everding (IPA: [ˈaʊgʊst ˈeːvɐdɪŋ]) (31 October 1928; Bottrop, Germany – 26 January 1999; Munich) was a German opera director and administrator.
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Baronne Anne Louise Germaine de Staël-Holstein (née Necker) (April 22, 1766 – July 14, 1817) (IPA: [stal]), commonly known as Madame de Staël, was a French-speaking Swiss author living in Paris and abroad.
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Johann Georg Hamann (August 27, 1730, Königsberg - June 21, 1788, Münster) was an important philosopher of the German (Counter-)Enlightenment and a main proponent of the Sturm und Drang movement.
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The West Wing is an American television serial drama created by Aaron Sorkin that was originally broadcast from 1999 to 2006. It was produced/written by Sorkin (for the first four seasons) and also produced by Thomas Schlamme. After season four it was produced by John Wells.
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Aesop Rock (born Ian Matthias Bavitz on May 11, 1976) is an American hip hop artist. He was in the forefront of the new wave of underground acts that emerged during the late 1990s/early 2000s. He is signed to El-P's Definitive Jux label.
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None Shall Pass
(2007)

None Shall Pass is the fifth full-length album by American hip hop artist Aesop Rock, released on 28 August, 2007 on Definitive Jux (see 2007 in music).
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None Shall Pass
(2007)

None Shall Pass is the fifth full-length album by American hip hop artist Aesop Rock, released on 28 August, 2007 on Definitive Jux (see 2007 in music).
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Collective consciousness refers to the shared beliefs and moral attitudes which operate as a unifying force within society.[1] This term was used by the French social theorist Émile Durkheim (1858-1917) in his books The Division of Labour (1893),
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Flugabwehrkanone — literally: air-defense gun), for anti-aircraft guns or their shells, as in flak jacket; or in the figurative sense: "drawing flak" = being heavily criticized

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