I've been thinking about geist, the german word from which we get our word ghost and is often translated as Spirit. I just finished a paper on Hegel's Phenomenolgy of Spirit, and everything is still floating around in my head.
Hegel tried to give a description of spirit(geist) proper, not in the sense of ghost, but rather the spirit we talk about when we talk about the Spirit of Capitalism, or the Spirit of Democracy, or the Spirit of Christian Giving, or the Spirit of Hope, or zeitgeist the Spirit of the Times, or the military's Spirit of Discipline, Spirit of the Rule of Law.
How do you cultivate a geist? It's definitely a communal thing. In Ender's Game, we all expected and wanted Ender to win, and cared about a game. I imagine that Harry Potter is the same way. In a sense, we were swept up into the geist portrayed in the book.
In "The Winter of Our Discontent," Ethan Hawley commits moral transgressions because he feels like he is letting down his family legacy, also, he feels doubly bad because he wife is so peppy and full of hope about his imminent success, then the fortune teller who tells him that there is success and dignity in his future. All of those pressure creates a foundation or geist, from which he acts to fulfill his role.
I'm wondering about how you create geist? Do you do it with stories? Do you do it with expectations?
Even with the Da Vinci Code, Brown did well in creating a geist, using all of the stories of templars, secrets, and Catholicism to serve as a foundation, giving urgency to Langford's actions.
[ June 15, 2006, 05:32 PM: Message edited by: Irami Osei-Frimpong ]
Posted by Scott R (Member # 567) on :
quote:I'm wondering about how you create geist? With stories? With expectations?
I'm still uncertain what you mean by geist. How is it different from a shared sense of purpose? Or enchantment?
quote:Even with the Da Vinci Code, Brown did well in creating a geist
Er... the only thing I've noticed in the Da Vinci Code (listening to it now) that Brown does well is vivid imagery. His sense of scene is about his only strength as a writer. And even that gets lost in his devotion to synonyms and $30 words.
Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
The geist is kind of the ethical fabric that allows moral actions to be intelligible as praiseworthy or blameworthy. It's the backdrop which makes individual actions morally sensible.
I guess it could be considered, "Setting the scene."
[ June 15, 2006, 05:36 PM: Message edited by: Irami Osei-Frimpong ]
Posted by monteverdi (Member # 2896) on :
For your question to be as good as it can be, you need to discriminate between the "Geist" that develops out of, and that is known through, the dialectical logic, and the "mood" or "setting" of popular fiction(s). Hegel would not consider the world process to be fictional, although he would consider the processes of fiction and their relationship to society to be part of a "Geist".....
The idea of fiction -- its "possibility" and, now, its actuality (as the reading public has proven) might be, for example, an element of the commodification of, say, the imagination etc. and so, part of your "Spirit of Capitalism".
In contrast to fiction(s), with there "Where do you want to go today..." ethos, you might put the Old Testament, especially the Torah, and its rigid, rule-based, constraints. A "worldplay" sustaining a moral community 2000 years later etc.
Regards, T
Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
Monteverdi,
I I fear your post may complicate things more than they need to be.
Let's deal with an example:
You see a person jump into a rushing river to save a drowning kid. You see a heroic act.
What makes it a heroic act is that we've heard tell stories of people who did not jump into the river. We've also heard old heroes tell of the time that they did jump into a river. Somehow all of those stories have created the spirit of heroism, such that when we see a person jump into a river, we think, "That was a heroic act."
It gets a little bit trickier when we talk about procedural justice. When the jury handed down the O.J. verdict, some people said, "Justice has been served," and we know it's just because it went through all of the right procedures, and since we are a procedural people, with our stories tying justice to the rule of law, the Spirit of Justice, as seen through our community apprehends the verdict as just.
Now there is another set of people, controversially we can say they are in our community(some people consider community to determined by the fact that they are under the same geist) who believe that justice was not served, not because the procedures were not followed, but because O.J. killed Nicole Simpso. Their geist holds that Justice is tied to the deed and not the procedure.
According to Hegel, in order to apprehend any sort of ethical action, we have to be under the sway of some geist, more contemporary philosophers would argue that the biggest geist of them all is that we some how got away from the whole geist business.
Either way, I'm trying to figure out how these geists work in order to motivate and clarify fictional moral dilemmas. Are they made up purely of narratives? Are they motivated by expectations? Why were you thrilled that Harry caught the golden snitch?
Posted by Tatiana (Member # 6776) on :
Irami, mine comes from the sum total of all the stories I've loved in my life, and my responses to them.
Posted by Peer (Member # 4686) on :
quote:Originally posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong: Monteverdi,
I I fear your post may complicate things more than they need to be.
Let's deal with an example:
You see a person jump into a rushing river to save a drowning kid. You see a heroic act.
What makes it a heroic act is that we've heard tell stories of people who did not jump into the river. We've also heard old heroes tell of the time that they did jump into a river. Somehow all of those stories have created the spirit of heroism, such that when we see a person jump into a river, we think, "That was a heroic act."
It gets a little bit trickier when we talk about procedural justice. When the jury handed down the O.J. verdict, some people said, "Justice has been served," and we know it's just because it went through all of the right procedures, and since we are a procedural people, with our stories tying justice to the rule of law, the Spirit of Justice, as seen through our community apprehends the verdict as just.
Now there is another set of people, controversially we can say they are in our community(some people consider community to determined by the fact that they are under the same geist) who believe that justice was not served, not because the procedures were not followed, but because O.J. killed Nicole Simpso. Their geist holds that Justice is tied to the deed and not the procedure.
According to Hegel, in order to apprehend any sort of ethical action, we have to be under the sway of some geist, more contemporary philosophers would argue that the biggest geist of them all is that we some how got away from the whole geist business.
Either way, I'm trying to figure out how these geists work in order to motivate and clarify fictional moral dilemmas. Are they made up purely of narratives? Are they motivated by expectations? Why were you thrilled that Harry caught the golden snitch?
I really despise Hegel so I suggest explaining it with a sociological concept.
Emile Durkheim stated, that in every society, there are "faits sociaux", social facts, that means in every society there are conceptions of how an individual should act and what acts are considered good or bad. These social facts are taught by parents, in school etc. and all societies sanction their members for their actions.
For your example with the heroism we were all taught in one form or another what makes an act heroic and we learned that heroic acts are good and praiseworthy. We internalised this judgement and are convinced that saving a child is a good and noble act. This matrix of values is applied to everything, real or fictitious so we judge characters in novels in the same way as we do real people.
Posted by monteverdi (Member # 2896) on :
Irami,
All heroic acts are moral acts ? Fiction may be immoral What ISN'T a story ? Procedures are deeds too. Geist = Context ? Hegel drew (via Kant) an important distinction between what one might apprehend and what what one can comprehend (the 'sublime' falling into their negotiation). Are moral acts sublime? Can moral acts create their own, new contexts for interpretation? (i.e. Rilke's 'Archaic Torso of Achilles',or a suicide bomber...i.e: "you must change your life")
Do they ("geists") ACT or are they simply boundaries on the sphere of intelligible behaviour, like A LANGUAGE compared with SPEAKING a language).
Geist as the setting on a thermostat, around which the room temperature oscillates: the setting (70) is not the temperature (warm).
Is your question "Who sets the thermostat?" or, "Who decides what warm is?"
Are all novels blasphemous? Don't they set the thermostat AND try to tell you what warm is?
Regards, T (edited for typo...)
[ June 19, 2006, 12:13 PM: Message edited by: monteverdi ]
Posted by KarlEd (Member # 571) on :
I have nothing pertinent to add, but I just wanted to say I just ran across Hegel and geist in a totally unrelated subject I was reading up on this weekend and thought the synchronicity was interesting. Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
quote:Do they ("geists") ACT or are they simply boundaries on the sphere of intelligible behaviour, like A LANGUAGE compared with SPEAKING a language).
They seem to be boundaries, or preconditions for intelligibility, like Kant would say about space and time. In other words, before we make "sense," of any action, we already have to be under the sway of a geist. When I see a cup, and recognize a cup as a cup, I already have to have someone using a cup-like-thing as a cup somewhere in my geist, and furthermore, there something communal about it, also, because I when I ask someone to hand me something to pour this liquid in, he/she will hand me the cup.
Now, what kind of power these things exert is harder to understand, for example, the Spirit of capitalism and the spirit of altruism are often at odds. I wrote a paper about a year and a half ago on Homer and the use of myth within the Illiad, I thought then, as I do now, that when geists clash, that sets a foundation for individual character to shine through. So I don't know if Geists influence people, or do they merely clash with each other, and people choose between. I'm hazy on the details.
Posted by BannaOj (Member # 3206) on :
What is the difference between the words "geist" and "paradigm"? The current thread explanation of "geist" sounds like the same thing as "paradigm" to me. If they are different, how?
AJ
Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
They are similar, but the distinction, and I think that it's an important one, is that a paradigm is something put on a given situation. "Para" alongside and "digm," from the greek Dechomai, to show. A sort of a posited law.
A geist is a precondition that allows it to be in the first place.
For example, the switch from Newtonian physics to relativity can be see as a paradigm shift. We have an event, and we needed a rough model that help us predict the outcome of a seemingly similar event, and maybe gives a little bit of an explanation. That's a paradigm.
But a geist is something that allows it to be intelligible to be to begin with. It's a precondition for the existence of the thing.
[ June 19, 2006, 05:22 PM: Message edited by: Irami Osei-Frimpong ]
Posted by BannaOj (Member # 3206) on :
Hmmm, I think the modern definition of the word paradigm has diverged significantly from what you are saying. From Dictionary.com
quote: Applications of the term [paradigm] in other contexts show that it can sometimes be used more loosely to mean “the prevailing view of things" The Usage Panel splits down the middle on these nonscientific uses of paradigm. Fifty-two percent disapprove of the sentence: The paradigm governing international competition and competitiveness has shifted dramatically in the last three decades.
As far as I'm concerned, common use dicates the definition, so the usage panel can dissaprove all they want. The given example is exactly how the word paradigm is being commonly used.
Having said that, it appears "geist" has more exisstential, philisophical overtones than paradigm does. It also seems to be the end "Goal" rather than how you get there.
To see if I'm understanding correctly:
Would the "American Dream" (of homeownership) be considered a giest in the public consciousness?
AJ
Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
quote: Would the "American Dream" (of homeownership) be considered a giest in the public consciousness?
Yep.
Now Hegel understood that the shape of a people's geist is substantively different than the shape of another people's geist. In other words, there can be a people in the world who do not aspire to own homes, and even when the concepts of public property are explained, they may still be apathetic. He is not a complete relativist, but he does think that there are substantive differences in the shape of different community's geists.
What causes these differences? That's the issue. Another issue is that Hegel understood that any one communal geist(thesis) is doomed because it's inadequate to an individual's drive to externalize his.her slightly different individual geist(anti-thesis), until a third geist is perceived as the unity in the other two(synthesis), which then just becomes another inadequate communal geist.
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