Volksgeist
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Revision as of 16:39, 11 January 2018
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"What’s heaven? Heaven is where the police are British, the chefs are French, the mechanics are German, the lovers are Italian and the bankers are Swiss. So then, what’s hell? Hell is where the police are German, the chefs are British, the mechanics are French, the lovers are Swiss and the bankers are Italian." [...] "Prejudice is good in its time and place" -- Johann Gottfried Herder, This Too a Philosophy of History for the Formation of Humanity "The resemblance of Bastian's Volkergedanken, Lazarus's and Steinthal's Volksgeister and, by implication, Wilhelm von Humboldt's Nationalcharakter was very close. Each designated the particular psychological core of any given people, which ultimately determined cultural production and individual behavior." --George W. Stocking, Jr. |
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Volksgeist is a German loanword (literally meaning "spirit of the people") for a unique "spirit" possessed collectively by each people or nation. The idea has its origins in the Romantic era and was proposed by Johann Gottfried Herder as a way of encouraging German-speaking peoples to forge a national and cultural identity.
The concept is associated with the concept of national, racial or ethnic stereotypes based on generalizations. Compare Zeitgeist. The premise is simple: is there any truth in German gründlichkeit and pünktlichkeit, are the French good lovers or do they more frequently make love than the rest of Europe, do Italians really have better aesthetic judgement, are Belgians averse to authority, are the Dutch candid and permissive?
The concept of volksgeist was also influential in American cultural anthropology. According to the historian of anthropology George W. Stocking, Jr., "… one may trace the later American anthropological idea of culture back through Bastian's Volkergedanken and the folk psychologist's Volksgeister to Wilhelm von Humboldt's Nationalcharakter -- and behind that, although not without a paradoxical and portentous residue of conceptual and ideological ambiguity, to the Herderian ideal of Volksgeist."
References
- Azurmendi, J. 2008. Volksgeist. Herri gogoa, Donostia, Elkar, ISBN 978-84-9783-404-9.
- Stocking, George W. 1996. 'Volksgeist as Method and Ethic: Essays on Boasian Ethnography and the German Anthropological Tradition. ISBN 0-299-14554-9
See also
- Elements of culture
- Ethics
- Ethnic stereotypes
- Folk
- Geist
- Morality
- Mores
- Nationalism
- National emblem
- National stereotypes
- National character studies
- Popular consciousness
- Sittengeschichte
- Stereotypes of White Americans and Europeans
- Volk (German word)
- Völkerpsychologie
- Weltgeist
- World culture
- Zeitgeist
- This Too a Philosophy of History for the Formation of Humanity (1774) by Herder.
