Was ist Geist? / Qu’est-ce que l’esprit?

What is spirit? This is one of the fundamental questions of philosophy. It concerns the self-understanding of our conscious life. We describe our thoughts, perceptions and feelings as "mental states". We puzzle over the position of the mind in the cosmos and in the evolution of nature. We see a certain spirit realised in the institutions of action, speak with Montesquieu of the "spirit of the laws", with Hegel of the "objective spirit" of the state, with Max Weber of the "Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism" - or are disturbed by the "new spirit of capitalism" (Luc Boltanski) of our time. We say with Kant that a work of art not only conforms to certain rules, but also "has spirit", or we search with Kandinsky for the "spiritual in art". In religions, we encounter the concept of a "holy spirit" and a "creative spirit". But what spirit is is the subject of the articles collected here.