Link to the relevant article;
https://www.midwesternmarx.com/articles/why-the-left-should-reject-heideggers-thought-part-one-the-question-of-being-by-colin-bodayle
One of my several past fandoms was as a (often drunken!) Heideggerian. I certainly wouldn’t consider myself such now. I gave up considering any philosophy or system of thought as being able to capture and fully articulate the ultimate truth along with Smirnoff and Erdinger.
Of course, I still think some are far more profound and powerful as tools in understanding existence (I’m not referring to the booze). But, the more I actually learned about Heidegger and my exposure to similar veins in philosophy which showed up some shortcomings in Heidegger’s work (principally his flooding his texts with neologisms and posturing verbal woo) the less I found myself taking his corner.
Strange then to say, I still feel a knee- jerk impulse to defend him on occasion. However, being a pretty inadequate thinker (and writer) myself, I often have to take a good amount of time to focus, articulate, and properly arrange my thoughts. I took issue on an otherwise extremely enlightening article on Heidegger published on the Midwestern Marx website.
The issue is not really particular to Heidegger, but rather concerns the common-sense understanding of the ‘World’ and dependency. Of course, my own dedication to Buddhist philosophy would militate against the idea that anything can exist independently of anything else, so I am biased through spiritual disposition. That should be acknowledged when I make any arguments on relevant questions. Heidegger was neither a Buddhist nor a Marxist. But cleaving to these identity designations aside, I would like to present here my case of objection to (admittedly a very brief and not emphasised) point in the article. The author states;
“Marxist philosophy cannot ally itself with Heideggerian subjective idealism. The most fundamental commitment of dialectical materialism is the view that a material world exists independently of the mind prior to human consciousness”
The world does not exist independently of the mind. Mind is as much a part of existence as matter. Actually, ‘the world’ and ‘the mind’ are designations for aspects of experience derived as abstracts from (human ) experience, the one indicating exteriority, the other interiority. But, really these are just aspects of an experienced-and experiencing - whole. They are mutually implicating. When we point at ‘the world’ prior to the evolution of human beings, what we are pointing at is still our (human mind-dependent) projection/objectification of our world. Intellectual understanding and discursive thinking are dependant on human mind(s).
The objectified and analysed material world is also dependent on the human mind. Analysis is a function or a tool for our interests and desires. Subjectivity and objectivity are impositions from or developments within consciousness. What exists prior to objectifying consciousness, is neither the objective nor subjective worlds. It could be called a ‘World’ (in fact , it's closer to ungarnished reality), but it's certainly not what we would consider the ‘common sense’ understanding of World.
Prior to subjective consciousness- as a general condition, not necessarily individual ego-consciousness, how could there be an objective world, much less an objective world determined as material? To say something historically exists prior to the evolution of human consciousness is fine, but whatever it is depends on subsequent human evolution (since it’s the same existence where everything is interconnected fundamentally). And what is now true of the relationship between our consciousness and the world is true of our consciousness and the world objectified historically; they’re not separate and what we see will be determined according to the conditions of the human consciousness.
When and if humanity becomes extinct (which with climate collapse seems an increasingly likely speculation) the world, the universe is no longer the universe. Without a differentiating consciousness, it’s simply undifferentiated existence. If humans aren’t the only sentient beings with an intellectual capacity, then undifferentiated existence could still manifest a world, but the world that is this human realm of nature-and-human, or the common sense understanding of the world, is absent.
When and if humanity becomes extinct (which with climate collapse seems an increasingly likely speculation) the world, the universe is no longer the universe. Without a differentiating consciousness, it’s simply undifferentiated existence. If humans aren’t the only sentient beings with an intellectual capacity, then undifferentiated existence could still manifest a world, but the world that is this human realm of nature-and-human, or the common sense understanding of the world, is absent.
This world of ours is so precious because it is inextricably bound up with our life. If we destroy the fabric of the world of common sense, of scientific understanding, of everything that is manifest as the experience of nature-and-human, then truly, the world ceases to be. What remains is unnameable and as far as we embodied human beings can be concerned, irrelevant.
No fire, no fuel. (For fuel to be fuel it depends on fire being fire and burning fuel). No humanity, no world.