Geist

Geist is the German word that Hegel's entire philosophy exists to articulate. No English word captures its full meaning. It is sometimes translated as spirit (which misleads by suggesting the religious or supernatural), sometimes as mind (which misleads by suggesting individual consciousness), sometimes as culture (which misleads by suggesting mere customary practice). Geist is all of these and something more: it is the rational, self-developing activity that takes form in individual minds, in social institutions, in cultural practices, in art, religion, and philosophy — the collective self-consciousness of humanity progressively coming to know itself through its own historical activity. The Phenomenology of Spirit is literally the phenomenology of Geist: the description of how this collective rational activity experiences itself at each stage of its self-development.