Owl of Minerva

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Athenian piece of four drachms with the helmeted head of Pallas Athene on one side and the owl on the other

The owl of Minerva or owl of Athena is a symbol of prudence and wisdom .

origin

The Etruscan goddess Menrva with the attribute of the owl on her shield

The owl - more precisely the little owl (Athene noctua) - was sacred to the Greek goddess Athene , the goddess of wisdom and the city goddess of Athens . There this bird of prey was not uncommon on the slopes of the Acropolis , especially on gems and Athenian coins depictions of the owl of Athena were widespread. The comedy poet Aristophanes coined around 400 BC. The phrase owls to Athens for a superfluous, senseless act.

In Roman mythology , Minerva was equated with Athena and associated with the owl. The owl was also an attribute of the Menrva among the Etruscans . It is widely believed that the goddess Menrva is of Etruscan origin and was later adopted as Minerva by the Romans and other Italian cultures.

In ancient times, the symbolism of the owl was varied: As an animal of Minerva / Athena, a brainchild literally, she stood for wisdom and prudence, at the same time she was afraid but also as unfortunate and death of birds.

Use in modern times

Symbol of the Illuminati: The owl of Minerva. Print from 1776
The coat of arms of the Swiss town of Montagnola

In modern times, the owl's association with intellectuality and rationality predominates. The Order of Illuminati , a radical Enlightenment secret society that existed from 1776 to 1785, used the owl, which was also sitting on an open book, as a symbol of wisdom.

The German philosopher Georg Friedrich Hegel compared in 1820 in his Elements of the Philosophy of Right , the philosophy with the dawn active owl of Minerva:

“If philosophy paints its gray in gray, then a figure of life has grown old, and with gray in gray it cannot be rejuvenated, but only recognized; Minerva's owl does not begin its flight until dawn. "

Like owls, which only begin to fly around at dusk, is philosophy that can only provide explanations when the phenomena to be explained are already history . Philosophers can only interpret the past. Philosophy therefore presupposes an experience of reality and cannot develop utopian fantasies out of itself ; it is always about the knowledge of what is.

This became one of the most cited sayings of Hegel, according to Ernst Bloch it is one of the great parables in world literature, "one that would be worthy of Shakespeare ". In a conversation with Hegel in 1827, Karl Ludwig Michelet added that the philosophy was not only the flight of owls, but "also the stroke of the cock of a new morning [...] which heralds a rejuvenated figure in the world". Herbert Marcuse uses Hegel's owl metaphor to criticize the resigned trait of his philosophy, which no longer dares to change the world. Louis Althusser understands the saying as a metaphor for the apparent eternity of the existing: Hegel's philosophy is only a self-reflection of his present, which he has never been able to transcend in his mind.

A coin with the owl is part of the logo of the European Society for the History of Economic Thought (ESHET), founded in 1995 .

The Swiss town of Montagnola has Minerva's owl on its coat of arms. She sits on a circle, with the coat of arms of the political municipality Collina d'Oro , of which Montagnola is part, adorns the corresponding corner.

Web links

Commons : Owl of Athena  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Christian Hünemörder: Owls . In: The New Pauly . Metzler, Stuttgart and Weimar 1998, column 247.
  2. ↑ Georg Büchmann : Winged words. The classic treasure trove of quotes . 39th edition, edited by Winfried Hofmann. Ullstein, Berlin 1993, p. 304
  3. ^ Nancy Thomson de Grummond : Etruscan Myth, Sacred History and Legend. University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia 2006, ISBN 9781931707862 , p. 71.
  4. ↑ Will Richter : Eulen : In: Der Kleine Pauly . dtv, Munich 1979, Vol. 4, Col. 421 f.
  5. ^ Manfred Agethen: Secret society and utopia. Illuminati, Freemasons and German Late Enlightenment . Oldenbourg, Munich 1987, p. 150; Joachim Körber: Science at Dan Brown . Wiley-VCH Verlag, Weinheim 2009, p. 197.
  6. ↑ Georg Friedrich Hegel, Basics of the Philosophy of Law . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1972, p. 14.
  7. ↑ Gabriel Amengual: The non-simultaneity of philosophy. The history of philosophy in its overall historical context . In: Henning Ottmann (ed.): Hegeljahrbuch 1997: Hegel and the history of philosophy . Vol. 1, Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1998, p. 107
  8. ↑ Ernst Bloch: Subject - Object. Notes on Hegel. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1971, p. 231
  9. ↑ See also in: Wolfgang Fritz Haug : Eule der Minerva . In: Historical-Critical Dictionary of Marxism , Volume 3 ( online , accessed May 24, 2016).
  10. ↑ Gabriel Amengual: The non-simultaneity of philosophy. The history of philosophy in its overall historical context . In: Henning Ottmann (ed.): Hegeljahrbuch 1997: Hegel and the history of philosophy . Vol. 1, Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1998, p. 107
  11. ^ Herbert Marcuse: Reason and Revolution: Hegel and the emergence of social theory. Luchterhand, 1962, p. 166
  12. ↑ Louis Althusser et al .: Lire le Capital , Vol. 1, Paris 1968, p. 124 f.