Zeitgeist: Encyclopedia - Zeitgeist

Zeitgeist

Zeitgeist is originally a German expression that means "the spirit (Geist) of the time (Zeit)". It denotes the intellectual and cultural climate of an era. The German pronunciation of the word is [ˈtsa͡ɪtga͡ɪst] (IPA).

The concept of Zeitgeist goes back to the German philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder. In 1769 he 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").

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.

Zeitgeist - 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

Zeitgeist - 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".

Zeitgeist - Google Zeitgeist

• Google Zeitgeist - Google publishes some interesting trends and patterns in people's searching habits.

See also

• Collective consciousness
• List of English words of German origin
• Generation X

Zeitgeist - Links

• Christian Adolph Klotz
• Christian Adolf Klotz in: Meyers Konversations-Lexikon, 4. Aufl., 1888, Vol. 9, Page 859
• Genius seculi blog ( german php blog )
• Zeitgeist Bibliography

Category: German loanwords

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Zeitgeist", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki