The Owl of Minerva

The owl of Minerva is the owl that accompanies Minerva in Roman myths, seen as a symbol of wisdom. It was used by the nineteenth-century idealist philosopher G.W.F. Hegel to mean philosopher. Hegel noted that “the owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk” — meaning that philosophy comes to understand a way of life just as it passes away. Philosophy cannot be prescriptive because it understands only in hindsight. He had in mind the transition from eighteenth-century feudalism to nineteenth-century commercialism and democracy.