Zeitgeist

in the Netherlands Zeitgeist literally refers to the mind of the time (tijdsgeest), and mind is understood as the mental spirit (state of mind). The word zeitgeist 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.


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 a historical character in its own right, rather than a generalized description for an era.
Definitions
"Zeitgeist" refers to the ethos of an identified group of people, that expresses a particular 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).

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.

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 or in the near future.- August Everding
Opinions that deviate from the ruling zeitgeist always aggravate the crowd.