in order to make sense of a complex historical reality, while admitting internal diversity and conflict.

Because it names what appears self-evident or "in the air" at a given moment, the notion is often used critically. Historians and theorists have pointed out that appeals to the zeitgeist can obscure social conflicts, overlook minority or dissident positions, or suggest a misleading uniformity in the culture of an age. Others have emphasized that describing the zeitgeist of a period always involves an act of interpretation from a particular