T: Did he prophesy also the failure of the Russian revolution and the rise of Stalin?
I think we need to understand Hegel's quote about the owl of Minerva in conjunction with Hegel's broader philosophy, which I believe is crucial to the emergence of a critical marxism, rather than the dogmatic variant.
What makes the owl fly at all is a (formative) process that Hegel characterised as a contradiction between the definition and the experience. 'Definition' could be understood here as philosophy or theory and 'experience' that which falsifies some or other aspect of that theory and thereby drives it on to a new level. I reckon we should see the Russian revolution in that way, rather than as the fulfilment of prophecies. We need to be formed as subjects by the experience of the Russian revolution, and the way that it ultimately falsified its own theory. This is what Hegel teaches us, by virtue of the fact that he, unlike Marx, had a genuine theory of subjectivity.
Oh and he also said somewhere — hopefully someone can remind me where — that a democracy in a society of yobs will be quite worthless.
Tahir
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