National spirit

Hegelianism
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Basic concepts
absolute spirit national spirit absolute idea general dialectic antithesis , removal unfortunate consciousness
Texts
Phenomenology of the Spirit Science of logic Encyclopedia of Philosophy Legal philosophy
Currents
Young Hegelians Tubingen School Russian Hegelianism actual idealism
People
Strauss , Bower , Marx Green , Bradley , McTaggart Croce , Gentile Kozhev

The national spirit (also folk spirit , German Volksgeist ) is the key concept of the philosophy of the history of the times of romantic nationalism .

Around the 17th century, in practical diplomacy, there was a habit of noticing and comparing national characters with each other. Later it led to the emergence of the very term “national spirit” ( l'esprit des nations ) in Bossuet and the French Enlightenment, especially in Voltaire and Montesquieu . Under the influence of Montesquieu, Friedrich Carl von Moser published a little book (56 pages) “On the German national spirit” ( Von dem deutschen Nationalgeist , 1765 ), which caused an extensive discussion. ^[1] Herder ’s teaching on the national spirit, on the one hand, develops enlightenment, on the other hand, it already anticipates the romantic feeling of the irrational and the mysterious in the national spirit. In the romantic doctrine of the productive spirit of the peoples of the Brothers Grimm , which was generally narrow and nationalistic , this spirit ought to generate from the dark womb all the uniqueness of a nation. Subsequently, the romantic doctrine of the historical school of law ( Savigny ) led to an underestimation of supranational relations and influences in historical life and was connected by a umbilical cord with a natural legal understanding of history, since this understanding of history replaced faith in the stable nature of peoples. This doctrine isolated individual people and ignored the effects on their spiritual being, arising from the political and cultural coexistence of peoples — a kind of aberration of vision that made itself known almost until the end of the 19th century.

In Hegel, the national spirit denotes the cultural and historical projections of the Absolute Spirit . Entering into confrontation with each other, national spirits dialectically move history . The empirical expression of the national spirit is the people. The national spirit through national character influences the formation of the individual spirit. The national spirit is aware of itself in religion , art , the system of law , politics , philosophy (along with the spirit of the time ). The state is an organization of a certain people, an objectified expression of the identity of the national spirit.