Geist (German pronunciation:[ˈɡaɪst]ⓘ) is aGerman noun with a significant degree of importance inGerman philosophy. Geist can be roughly translated into three English meanings:ghost (as in the supernatural entity),spirit (as in the Holy Spirit), andmind orintellect. Some English translators resort to using "spirit/mind" or "spirit (mind)" to help convey the meaning of the term.[1]
Geist is also a central concept inGeorg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's 1807The Phenomenology of Spirit (Phänomenologie des Geistes). Notable compounds, all associated with Hegel's view ofworld history of the late 18th century, includeWeltgeist (German:[ˈvɛltˌɡaɪ̯st]ⓘ, "world-spirit"),Volksgeist ("national spirit") andZeitgeist ("spirit of the age").
GermanGeist (masculine gender:der Geist) continuesOld High Germangeist, attested as the translation of Latinspiritus.It is the direct cognate of Englishghost, from aWest Germanicgaistaz. Its derivation from aPIE rootg̑heis- "to be agitated, frightened" suggests that the Germanic word originally referred to frightening (c.f. Englishghastly) apparitions orghosts, and may also have carried the connotation of "ecstatic agitation,furor" related to the cult ofGermanic Mercury.As the translation of biblical Latinspiritus (Greek πνεῦμα) "spirit, breath" the Germanic word acquires a Christian meaning from an early time, notably in reference to theHoly Spirit (Old Englishsē hālga gāst "the Holy Ghost", OHGther heilago geist, Modern Germander Heilige Geist). Poltergeist (Noisy/Disruptive Geist) is a common interchangeable term.The English word is in competition with Latinatespirit from the Middle English period, but its broader meaning is preserved well into the early modern period.[2]
The German noun much like Englishspirit could refer to spooks or ghostly apparitions of the dead, to the religious concept, as in the Holy Spirit, as well as to the "spirit of wine", i.e.,ethanol.However, its special meaning of "mind,intellect" never shared by Englishghost is acquired only in the 18th century, under the influence of Frenchesprit.In this sense it became extremely productive in the German language of the 18th century in general as well as in 18th-century German philosophy.Geist could now refer to the quality of intellectual brilliance, to wit, innovation, erudition, etc.It is also in this time that the adjectival distinction ofgeistlich "spiritual, pertaining to religion" vs.geistig "intellectual, pertaining to the mind" begins to be made. Reference to spooks or ghosts is made by the adjectivegeisterhaft "ghostly, spectral".[3]
Numerouscompounds are formed in the 18th to 19th centuries, some of them loan translations of French expressions, such asGeistesgegenwart =présence d'esprit ("mental presence, acuity"),Geistesabwesenheit =absence d’esprit ("mental absence, distraction"),geisteskrank "mentally ill",geistreich "witty, intellectually brilliant",geistlos "unintelligent, unimaginative, vacuous" etc.It is from these developments that certain German compounds containing-geist have been loaned into English, such asZeitgeist.[4]
GermanGeist in this particular sense of "mind, wit, erudition; intangible essence, spirit" has no precise English-language equivalent, for which reason translators sometimes retainGeist as a German loanword.
There is a second word forghost in German:das Gespenst (neutral gender).Der Geist is used slightly more often to refer to a ghost (in the sense of flying white creature) thandas Gespenst. The corresponding adjectives aregespenstisch ("ghostly", "spooky") andgespensterhaft ("ghost-like"). AGespenst is described in German asspukender Totengeist, a "spooking ghost of the dead". The adjectivesgeistig andgeistlich on the other hand, can not be used to describe something spooky, asgeistig means "mental", andgeistlich means either "spiritual" or refers to employees of the church.Geisterhaft would also mean, likegespensterhaft, "ghost-like". While "spook" meansder Spuk (male gender), the adjective of this word is only used in its English form,spooky. The more common German adjective would begruselig, deriving fromder Grusel (das ist gruselig, colloquially:das ist spooky, meaning "that is spooky").
Geist is a central concept inHegel's philosophy. According to most interpretations, theWeltgeist ("world spirit") is not an actual object or a transcendent, godlike thing, but a means of philosophizing about history.[citation needed]Weltgeist is effected in history through themediation of variousVolksgeister ("national spirits"), thegreat men of history, such asNapoleon, are the "concreteuniversal".[citation needed]
This has led some to claim that Hegel favored thegreat man theory, although hisphilosophy of history, in particular concerning the role of the "universal state" (Universalstaat, which means a universal "order" or "statute" rather than "state"), and of an "End of History" is much more complex.
For Hegel, the great hero is unwittingly utilized byGeist orabsolute spirit, by a "ruse of reason" as he puts it, and is irrelevant to history once his historic mission is accomplished; he is thus subjected to theteleological principle of history, a principle which allows Hegel to reread the history of philosophy as culminating in his philosophy of history.
Weltgeist ("world-spirit") is older than the 18th century, at first (16th century) in the sense of "secularism, impiety, irreligiosity" (spiritus mundi), in the 17th century also personalised in the sense of "man of the world", "mundane or secular person".Also from the 17th century,Weltgeist acquired a philosophical or spiritual sense of "world-spirit" or "world-soul" (anima mundi, spiritus universi) in the sense ofPanentheism, a spiritual essence permeating all of nature, or the active principle animating the universe, including the physical sense, such as the attraction betweenmagnet and iron or betweenMoon and tide.[5]
This idea ofWeltgeist in the sense ofanima mundi became very influential in 18th-century German philosophy. In philosophical contexts,der Geist on its own could refer to this concept, as inChristian Thomasius,Versuch vom Wesen des Geistes (1709).[6]Belief in aWeltgeist as animating principle immanent to the universe became dominant in German thought due to the influence ofGoethe, in the later part of the 18th century.[7]
Already in the poetical language ofJohann Ulrich von König (d. 1745), theWeltgeistappears as the active, masculine principle opposite the feminine principle ofNature.[8]Weltgeist in the sense of Goethe comes close to being a synonym ofGod and can be attributed agency and will.Herder, who tended to prefer the formWeltengeist (as it were "spirit of worlds"), pushes this to the point of composing prayers addressed to this world-spirit:
The term was notably embraced byHegel and his followers in the early 19th century.For the 19th century, the term as used byHegel (1807) became prevalent, less in the sense of an animating principle of nature or the universe but as the invisible force advancingworld history:
Hegel's description ofNapoleon as "the world-soul on horseback" (die Weltseele zu Pferde) became proverbial.The phrase is a shortened paraphrase of Hegel's words in a letter written on 13 October 1806, the day before theBattle of Jena, to his friendFriedrich Immanuel Niethammer:
I saw the Emperor – this world-soul – riding out of the city on reconnaissance. It is indeed a wonderful sensation to see such an individual, who, concentrated here at a single point, astride a horse, reaches out over the world and masters it.[11]
The letter was not published in Hegel's time, but the expression was attributed to Hegel anecdotally, appearing in print from 1859.[12]It is used without attribution byMeyer Kayserling in hisSephardim (1859:103), and is apparently not recognized as a reference to Hegel by the reviewer inGöttingische gelehrte Anzeigen, who notes it disapprovingly, as one of Kayserling's "bad jokes" (schlechte Witze).[13]The phrase became widely associated with Hegel later in the 19th century.[14] Weiltgeist is distinct from Weltseele ("WorldSoul") .
Volksgeist orNationalgeist refers to a "spirit" of an individualpeople (Volk), its "national spirit" or "national character".[15] The termNationalgeist is used in the 1760s byJustus Möser and byJohann Gottfried Herder. The termNation at this time is used in the sense ofnatio "nation, ethnic group, race", mostly replaced by the termVolk after 1800.[16]In the early 19th century, the termVolksgeist was used byFriedrich Carl von Savigny in order to express the "popular" sense ofjustice.Savigniy explicitly referred to the concept of anesprit des nations used byVoltaire.[17] and of theesprit général invoked byMontesquieu.[18]
Hegel uses the term in hisLectures on the Philosophy of History.Based on the Hegelian use of the term,Wilhelm Wundt,Moritz Lazarus andHeymann Steinthal in the mid-19th-century established the field ofVölkerpsychologie ("psychology of nations").
In Germany the concept of Volksgeist has developed and changed its meaning through eras and fields. The most important examples are: In the literary field,Schlegel and theBrothers Grimm; in the history of cultures,Herder; in the history of the State or political history,Hegel; in the field of law,Savigny; and in the field of psychologyWundt.[19] This means that the concept is ambiguous. Furthermore it is not limited toRomanticism as it is commonly known.[20]
The concept of was also influential in American cultural anthropology. According to the historian of anthropologyGeorge W. Stocking, Jr., "… one may trace the later American anthropological idea of culture back through Bastian's Volkergedanken and the folk psychologist's Volksgeister to Wilhelm von Humboldt's Nationalcharakter – and behind that, although not without a paradoxical and portentous residue of conceptual and ideological ambiguity, to the Herderian ideal of Volksgeist."[clarification needed][year needed][page needed]
The compoundZeitgeist (/ˈzaɪtɡaɪst/;,[21] "spirit of the age" or "spirit of the times") similarly toWeltgeist describesan invisible agent or force dominating the characteristics of a given epoch inworld history.The term is now mostly associated withHegel, contrasting with Hegel's use ofVolksgeist "national spirit" andWeltgeist "world-spirit",but its coinage and popularization precedes Hegel, and is mostly due toHerder andGoethe.[4]
The term as used contemporarily may more pragmatically refer to afashion or fad which prescribes what is acceptable or tasteful, e.g. in the field ofarchitecture.[22]
Hegel inPhenomenology of the Spirit (1807) uses bothWeltgeist andVolksgeist but prefers the phraseGeist der Zeiten "spirit of the times" over thecompoundZeitgeist.[23]
Hegel believed that culture and art reflected its time. Thus, he argued[year needed][page needed] that it would be impossible to produce classical art in the modern world, as modernity is essentially a "free and ethical culture".[clarification needed][24]
The term has also been used more widely in the sense of an intellectual or aestheticfashion orfad.For example,Charles Darwin's 1859 proposition thatevolution occurs bynatural selection has been cited as a case of thezeitgeist of the epoch, an idea "whose time had come", seeing that his contemporary,Alfred Russel Wallace, was outlining similar models during the same period.[25]Similarly, intellectual fashions such as the emergence oflogical positivism in the 1920s, leading to a focus onbehaviorism andblank-slatism over the following decades, and later, during the 1950s to 1960s, the shift from behaviorism topost-modernism andcritical theory can be argued to be an expression of the intellectual or academic "zeitgeist".[25]Zeitgeist in more recent usage has been used by Forsyth (2009) in reference to his "theory ofleadership"[26] and in other publications describing models of business or industry.Malcolm Gladwell argued in his bookOutliers that entrepreneurs who succeeded in the early stages of a nascent industry often share similar characteristics.
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