‘The owl of Minerva flies only at dusk.’
"This was the view of
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831). But what does it
mean? Actually, that question ‘What does it mean?’ is one that
readers of Hegel’s works ask themselves a lot. His writing is
fiendishly difficult, partly because, like Kant’s, it is mostly
expressed in very abstract language and often uses terms that he
has himself invented. No one, perhaps not even Hegel, has
understood all of it. The statement about the owl is one of the
easier parts to decipher. This is his way of telling us that wisdom
and understanding in the course of human history will only
come fully at a late stage, when we’re looking back on what has
already happened, like someone looking back on the events of a
day as night falls."