Dialectics, temporality and historicity in Marcuse's early work

The interpretation of the Hegelian dialectic that the young Marcuse carries out in his early writings "On the Problem of the Dialectic I and II" (1930-31) and Hegel's Ontology and Theory of Historicity (1932) counteracts Heidegger's criticism to Hegel's dialectics. Both authors diverge also in their understanding of the meaning and scope of the phenomenon of temporality in Hegelian philosophy. However, when Marcuse elucidates Hegel's concept of historicity (Geschichtlichkeit), he perceives in his system a tension between the ontological concept of "life" and the idea of "absolute knowing." Since his entry into the Institut fur Sozialforschung, Marcuse would abandon the thematization of the concept of historicity-a task which occupied a central place in his early writings-due to the existential-ontological distortion of this concept and his incompatibility with materialist dialectic.