Talk:Geist (philosophy)

I found the word Geist used in Folklore researchers in Antropology, specially in Ernest Gellner, and I think it is referred as a kind of community which exist only in the mind of it's members, but with strenght enough to convince them of it's roots. Correct me if i'm wrong. Ionathan Yablonka

Source: Ernest Gellner, "Nations and Nationalisms"

Hegel and Heidegger
Just removed a statement saying that Geist in Hegel is like Dasein in Heidegger. This is wrong for so many reasons that there's no time to list them all, but a few important ones are: 1) For Heidegger, Dasein is a characteristic of human existence; for Hegel, Geist is also a characteristic of God; 2) Heidegger is trying to rupture explicitly with the epistemological, cognitive strand in German philosophy, and philosophy generally; in Hegel's phenomenology, the focus is on forms of knowledge and consciousness; 3)  For Heidegger, Dasein is part of an ontology; Hegel's ontology is laid out in his Logic, in which Dasein is one small phase of the evolution of Being and Nothingness, and doesn't have to do with this human sense of Dasein described by Heidegger.  Jeremy J. Shapiro 20:08, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

Dasein
da sein-being here, dort sein-being there) physically.

yes ,I agree with the above, in german "da" is here and "sein" is being,

Dasein - beinghere or existing.

mein Geist - my mind, my spirit.Dein Geist - your mind,your spirit. Ein Geist - a Ghost, a Spirit these are two opposite concepts.Dasein describes the physical and geist describes the spiritual, the mind, the psyche. In german "ein Geistlicher" is a Priest, a spiritual person so its like existencialist Dasein compared to geistliches Leben or spiritual Life. One is mere physically the other the spiritual Guss 04:15, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

Weltgeist
Weltgeist, the world spirit designates an idealistic principle of the world explanation, which can be found from the beginnings of philosophy into our more recent time. A world spirit was already accepted by the idealistic schools of old-Indian philosophy, whereby one explained objective reality as its product.

In early philosophy of the Greek antiquity Socrates, Aristoteles and Plato all paid homage, amongst other things to the concept of a world spirit .Weltgeist (translated from german  Weltgeist ).Guss 17:33, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

....whereby one explained objective reality as its product. ( See metaphysical objectivism...links established, hope its useful. Guss 18:46, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

Questioning purpose and justification of this article
I think this is a somewhat vague, if you will "flaky" article that is not clear about what it is trying to do, I guess because it's more like a dictionary article defining a term rather than an encyclopedia article defining a phenomenon or idea or school of thought or reality. Frankly, I'm not convinced that we need an article about "Geist", since it seems to me that the concepts of mind and spirit in the different philosophies should be treated in those philosophies, and they're not similar enough to warrant being grouped together under the word "Geist". What Hegel means by it is so different from what Plato and Aristotle meant by their analogous concepts (even though Hegel tries to show that they anticipated his concept and that, in a way, he was bringing Aristotle up to date), that it is confusing and distorting to imply that all of these different thinkers and traditions were talking about the same thing, especially since only the Germans were using the word "Geist". So I really question the validity of this article. Jeremy J. Shapiro 01:48, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

I dont agree Jeremy!
Encyclopedia''' - book, often in a number of volumes,giving information on many subjects or on many aspects of one subject ! Greek ekuklios paideia - all-round education''' this criticism above doesnt seem to be very constructive at all. And I strongly disagree! The Article on Geist is still only a Stub and can be perhaps integrated into another Page at a later stage. But at this time it is still growing ,there are several contributers and besides that I dont really understand what your problem is? Above you write about Dasein and Geist,terms widely used in Philosophy, and here you question purpose and even justification. This page deals with aspects and the subject of Human Spirit, with already many valid links! It is important and valid ! If you dont like it,go back to the Mc Donald page or whatever takes your fancy ! Do you question the justification of your critique at this early stage? If you can be more constructive I would appreciate it .Thanks

Guss 04:15, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

--203.131.184.98 07:23, 17 December 2005 (UTC)== geist == a german term meaning "ghost"