Geist means both mind and spirit. For Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel it is not a ghost behind the world but the developing life of reason in individuals, societies, art, religion and philosophy — subjective spirit, objective spirit (law, morality, the state), and absolute spirit. The Zeitgeist (“spirit of the age”) is a popular descendant.
Sententiae
phrases in the originalZeitgeist
Origin. Herder and Goethe popularized it; associated with Hegel’s philosophy of history (though Hegel preferred “Geist der Zeit”). — Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
For the mood and ideas of an era.
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related by shared connectionsPhenomenology of Spirit
Hegel’s first masterpiece — the “voyage of discovery” of consciousness through sense-certainty, self-consciousness, reason, spirit and religion to absolute knowing.
The Categorical Imperative
Kant’s supreme principle of morality — act only on maxims you could will as universal laws; treat humanity always as an end, never merely as a means.
What Is to Be Done?
Chernyshevsky’s prison-written utopian novel of “new people” and rational egoism — badly written, enormously influential, the target of Dostoevsky’s Underground Man.
German Idealism
The extraordinary philosophical movement after Kant — Fichte, Schelling, Hegel — that tried to complete his revolution by showing reality itself to be the work of mind or Spirit.
The Underground Man
Dostoevsky’s nameless, spiteful, hyper-conscious narrator who rebels against reason, progress and his own interests to prove he is free.
Notes from Underground
A spiteful, hyper-conscious ex-official rants from his “mousehole” against reason, progress and the Crystal Palace — often called the first existentialist novel.