Hegel and Marx also had attached much importance to individuals

A short intellectual autobiography of D.P. Chattopadhyaya is available in the book, History, Culture and Truth : Essays Presented to D.P. Chattopadhyaya, edited by Daya Krishna and K. Satchidananda Murty. He has some significant confessions to make with regard to his famous publication Sri Aurobindo and Karl Marx [TNM]:

Partly due to Popper’s primary influence on my mind and partly due to Hegel’s and Marx’s relative indifference to the importance of individuals in history, I was consistently, perhaps also uncritically, fair to Sri Aurobindo. The latter’s emphasis on individual freedom impressed me to an undue extent.

That Hegel and Marx also had attached much importance to individuals escaped my biased attention. What I failed to see clearly at that time is the Marxian thesis that “individuals are the real architects of history.” Also I downplayed Hegelian accent on human beings as expression of the Absolute.

In effect I was reading Hegel through the eyes of Bosanquet, particularly his ‘Philosophical Theories of State’. I was unduly influenced not only by Popper’s ‘Open Society’ but also by Hobhouse’s criticism of the Hegelian political philosophy as expounded in the ‘Metaphysical Theory of State.’ [p.343]