"One more word about giving instruction as to what the world ought to be. Philosophy in any case always comes on the scene too late to give it... When philosophy paints its gray in gray, then has a shape of life grown old. By philosophy's gray in gray it cannot be rejuvenated but only understood. The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk." G.W.F. Hegel.
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.
