Intellectuals and the Spirit of the Age: Weathercock or Barometer?

Abstract

The article examines the concept of Zeitgeist (“spirit of the age”), which was introduced by G.W.F. Hegel and played an important role in the philosophy and culture of Romanticism, but today this concept is mainly used in journalism. It is noted that, in the romantic tradition, an epoch is associated with an individualist hero, in whose personality the key tendencies of this epoch reveal themselves, and on the basis of those tendencies the essence of historical life is revealed. The research considers the reflection of this concept in Russian philosophy and culture (N.A. Berdyaev, P.Ya. Chaadaev, G.V. Florovsky, V. Khlebnikov). The task of an intellectual is to apply a kind of historical hermeneutics, analysis of the spirit of the age, and critical identification of negative tendencies that could lead to a repetition of negative experience. The article provides an overview of some manifestations of the spirit of the age in modern Russia: the formation of civil religiousness, latent multiculturalism that complicates the formation of national political unity, the conventionality of legal reality, and elements of legal nihilism. It is concluded that the conceptual representation of modernity can be associated with the concept of the spirit of the age, or the spirit of the times. Intellectuals have to act as spokesmen for the spirit of the age, performing functions of critical analysis and warning.