Zeitgeist

Concept and uses

Writers in sociology, cultural history and social psychology often use zeitgeist to describe a diffuse system of ideas, images and values that underpins the practices, behaviours and creations of a given period, shaping both individual lives and collective life while remaining only partly conscious to the actors involved. From this perspective, the zeitgeist can be treated as an ideal type in the sense of Max Weber: an analytic construct that accentuates certain traits in order to make sense of a complex historical reality, while admitting internal diversity and conflict.

Because it names what appears self-evident or "in the air" at a given moment, the notion is often used critically. Historians and theorists have pointed out that appeals to the zeitgeist can obscure social conflicts, overlook minority or dissident positions, or suggest a misleading uniformity in the culture of an age. Others have emphasized that describing the zeitgeist of a period always involves an act of interpretation from a particular standpoint, and that competing accounts of an era's spirit may coexist.

Theory of leadership

Hegel in Phenomenology of the Spirit (1807) uses both Weltgeist and Volksgeist, but prefers the phrase Geist der Zeiten "spirit of the times" over the compound Zeitgeist. cf. use of the phrase der Geist seiner Zeit ("the spirit of his time") in Lectures on the Philosophy of History, for example, "no man can surpass his own time, for the spirit of his time is also his own spirit."

The Hegelian concept is in contrast to the Great Man theory propounded by Thomas Carlyle, which sees history as the result of the actions of heroes and geniuses. In contrast, Hegel perceived such "great men", specifically Napoleon, as the "embodiment of the world-spirit" (Die Weltseele zu Pferde "the world-soul on horseback"Hegel, letter of 13 October 1806 to F. I. Niethammer, no. 74 (p. 119) in Briefe von und an Hegel ed. Hoffmeister, vol. 1 (1970). See also H. Schnädelbach in Wolfgang Welsch, Klaus Vieweg (eds.), Das Interesse des Denkens: Hegel aus heutiger Sicht, Wilhelm Fink Verlag (2003), p. 223, T. Pinkard, * Hegel: A Biography*, (2000), p. 228.). Carlyle stresses that leaders do not become leaders by fate or accident. Instead, these individuals possess characteristics of great leaders and these characteristics allow them to obtain positions of power.

According to Hegel biographer D. R. Forsyth, Leo Tolstoy disagreed with Carlyle's perspective, instead believing that leadership, like other things, was a product of the "zeitgeist", the social circumstances at the time.

The Great Man theory and the zeitgeist theory may be included in two main areas of thought in psychology. For instance, Great Man theory is very similar to the trait approach. Trait researchers are interested in identifying the various personality traits that underline human behaviors such as conformity, leadership, or other social behaviors. Thus, they agree that leadership is primarily a quality of an individual and that some people are pre-dispositioned to be a leader whereas others are born to follow these leaders. In contrast, situationist researchers believe that social behavior is a product of society. That is, social influence is what determines human behaviors. Therefore, situationism is of the same opinion as zeitgeist theory—leaders are created from the social environment and are molded from the situation. The concept of zeitgeist also relates to the sociological tradition that stems from Émile Durkheim and recently developed into social capital theory as exemplified by the work of Patrick Hunout.

These two perspectives have been combined to create what is known as the interactional approach to leadership. This approach asserts that leadership is developed through the mixing of personality traits and the situation. Further, this approach was expressed by social psychologist Kurt Lewin by the equation B = f(P, E) where behavior (B) is a function (f) of the person (P) and the environment (E).

In self-help and business models

Executives, venture capitalists, journalists, and authors have argued that the idea of a zeitgeist is useful in understanding the emergence of industries, simultaneous invention, and evaluating the relative value of innovations. Canadian journalist Malcolm Gladwell argued in his book, Outliers, that entrepreneurs who succeeded often share similar characteristics—early personal or significant exposure to knowledge and skills in the early stages of a nascent industry. He proposed that the timing of involvement in an industry, and often in sports as well, affected the probability of success. In Silicon Valley, a number of people (Peter Thiel, Alistair Davidson, Mac Levchin, Nicholas G. Carr, Vinod Khosla) have argued that much innovation has been shaped by easy access to the Internet, open source software, component technologies for both hardware and software (e.g., software libraries, software as a service), and the ability to reach narrow markets across a global market. Peter Thiel has commented: "There is so much incrementalism now."

In a zeitgeist market, the number of new entrants is high, differentiation in high-value products (the strongest predictor of new product success) is more difficult to achieve, and business models emphasizing service and solution over product and process, will enhance success. Examples include innovation in product experience, legal rights and bundling, privacy rights, and agency (where businesses act on behalf of customers).

References

References

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2. Theo Jung: [https://freidok.uni-freiburg.de/data/9343 "''Zeitgeist im langen 18. Jahrhundert. Dimensionen eines umstrittenen Begriffs''"], in: Achim Landwehr (ed.): ''Frühe Neue Zeiten. Zeitwissen zwischen Reformation und Revolution'', Bielefeld 2012, 319–355; idem: [https://freidok.uni-freiburg.de/data/10824 "The Politics of Time: Zeitgeist in Early Nineteenth-Century Political Discourse"], in: ''Contributions to the History of Concepts'' 9, no. 1 (2014), 24–49.
3. L. Meister, ''Eine kurze Geschichte der Menschenrechte'' (1789); ''der frivole Welt- und Zeitgeist'' ("the frivolous spirit of the world and the time") in [[Johann Kaspar Lavater. Lavater]], ''Handbibliothek für Freunde'' 5 (1791), p. 57; ''Zeitgeist'' in Grimm, ''Deutsches Wörterbuch''.
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