‘When philosophy paints its grey in grey, then has a shape of life grown old … The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk’: for Hegel, philosophy always ‘comes on the scene too late’. History can never be comprehended except in retrospect; what philosophy, as the wisdom of hindsight, grasps of the world's reality is what is already in the process of disappearing, even as it is grasped. And it may well be said that this applies in quite a strong sense to his own thought. As Emil Fackenheim puts it: ‘Such are the crises which have befallen the Christian West in the last half century that it may safely be said that, were he alive today, so realistic a philosopher as Hegel would not be a Hegelian.’

Since his appreciation of the owl of Minerva's nocturnal habits leads him to abstain from any serious prophecy of the future, it is not that subsequent history has refuted him in that sense. Also, as I have already remarked, it seems to me that Fackenheim himself tends to oversimplify the issue here, in his presentation. Nevertheless, at least at one level he is no doubt right: changes and developments in the social context of philosophizing must tend to impose different critical priorities on our thinking; and from that point of view it is clear that the world has changed to a very considerable extent from what it was in Hegel's day, in a number of quite significant respects.