Hegel saw each people’s spirit as shaping its religion, constitution, and philosophy.
Evidence
Term used by Hegel, e.g. in his Philosophy of History : “This Spirit of a People is a determinate and particular Spirit, and is, as just stated, further modified by the degree of its historical development. This Spirit, then, constitutes the basis and substance of those other forms of a nation’s consciousness, which have been noticed. … In virtue of the original identity of their essence, purport, and object, these various forms are inseparably united with the Spirit of the State. Only in connection with this particular religion can this particular political constitution exist; just as in such or such a State, such or such a Philosophy or order of Art.” — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 2123
Categorization
- DEFINE: Defines the Hegelian ‘Spirit of a People’ as the basis uniting a nation’s religion, state, and philosophy.
- XREF: Connects to later Gramsci’s critique of idealist state theory and to the Islamophobia field’s interest in how ‘civilization’ or ‘culture’ gets essentialized as a unified spirit. — connects to: Hegel ties a people’s character to local spirits expressed in occupation and body.