Existentialism and History

In her preface to Search for a Method, Barnes suggests that despite his seeming assertions to the contrary, Sartre, in at least some respects, maintains a priority of Existentialism over Marxism. In particular, on that interpretation, Being and Nothingness presents an account of absolute individual Freedom, a goal to which Marxism offers a means, namely the Dialectical process of eliminating Freedom-constraining Need. Entailed by this account is that the scheme of interpersonal relationships described in the earlier work is likewise a goal of Marxism. However, those relationships, according to Being and Nothingness, are fundamentally antagonistic, which, to resolve, if resolvable at all, would require another Dialectical cycle. So, that Sartre advocates Marxism as a means to that concept of society seems difficult for Barnes to defend. Indeed, Sartre explicitly asserts that the achievement of a classless society would entail interpersonal dynamics that are, under current conditions, inconceivable, which surely implies that Being and Nothingness has not conceived them. More generally, he commits himself to the Marxist thesis that every Philosophy, even itself, is an historically specific program, not an eternal truth about human nature. Accordingly, he is committed to situating the Existential structures of Being and Nothingness as a specific phase of Marxism, and to systematize the relationship between Existentialism and Marxism in terms of the latter, not in terms of the former.