The aim of this paper is to compare two different interpretations of the figure “the action of each and everyone” as put forth by Hegel in the Phenomenology of Spirit; in the passage of his work where this figure is described, the intersubjectity of the Spirit arises from the dynamics of human action. I will examine Herbert Marcuse’s and Jean Hyppolite’s understanding of this figure; the former’s is contained in Marcuse’s license work Hegel’s Ontology and the Foundation of a Theory of Historicity. In this work, Marcuse explains Hegel’s figure starting from the concept of life and from a heideggerian and an aristotelian perspective; he also appeals to the categories of possibility and reality; Hyppolite’s understanding of the Hegelian figure is exposed in the well-known commentary Genesis and structure of the Phenomenology of Spirit Hegels, and it appears to be existentialist in kind. Therefore, in my analysis I will compare these different understandings of the same figure, and I will sketch these authors’ philosophical theses and positions by explaining the points they share and the differences in their interpretations. For this reason elements crucial to my analysis will be the structure of action as a circle, the concept of individuality, the element of the light, the process of production of a work, the intersubjective dimension and the “thing itself” as one of the incarnations of the spirit.
