Zeitgeist – How Ideas Travel : : Politics, Culture and the Public in the Age of Revolution / / Maike Oergel.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter DG Plus DeG Package 2019 Part 1
• VerfasserIn: Oergel, Maike,
• Place / Publishing House: Berlin ;, Boston : : De Gruyter, , [2019]; ©2019
• Year of Publication: 2019
• Language: English
• Series: Culture & Conflict , 13
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (VII, 342 p.)

This book investigates the emergence of the modern concept of zeitgeist, the notion of a pervasive contemporary coherence, in the late 18th century. It traces zeitgeist’s descent from genius saeculi and investigates its association with public spirit and public opinion before surveying its prominence around the Wars of Liberation in Germany and during the politically restless 1820s in England. This trajectory shows that zeitgeist emerged from the 18th-century discourses about culture and the public functioning of social collectives. Under the impact of the French Revolution the term came to describe social processes of political and cultural challenge. Zeitgeist was discussed as a social dynamic in which emerging elites disseminate new ideas which find enough public approval to influence cultural and political behaviour and practice. These findings modify the view that zeitgeist eludes critical grasp and is mainly invoked for manipulative purposes by showing that the zeitgeist discussions around 1800 contributed to the formation of modern politics and capture key aspects of how ideas are disseminated within societies and across borders, providing a way of reading history horizontally.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Introduction -- 1. Johann Gottfried Herder – the “Inventor of Zeitgeist”? -- 2. The Making of Zeitgeist – Culture and Public Spirit between Enfranchisement and Control -- 3. The Public and Zeitgeist – Public Spirit and Public Opinion 1790–1800 -- 4. Zeitgeist in Germany – Public Opinion, History, and the People in Franz Josias von Hendrich, Ernst Brandes, and Ernst Moritz Arndt -- 5. Zeitgeist in Britain – The Spirit of the Age and Social Reform in Julius Hare, William Hazlitt, Thomas Carlyle, and J. S. Mill -- 6. How Ideas Travel (in Theory): The Zeitgeist Dynamic -- 7. How an Idea Travels (in Practice) – A Case Study -- Works Cited -- Index