and a human subjectivity" (Sartre 10). Because the subject is at the center of reality, there is no essential object or ideal form on which the subject may depend. That is, "existence precedes essence, or, if you prefer, [] subjectivity must be the starting point" (Sartre 13; emphasis added). In other words, cosmic reality--still less abiding moral truth--does not wash over the individual. Instead, the subjective entity at once interprets the found world and creates that world's truth or reality, with each succeeding thought and action. Who can interpret and create is perforce subjective, rational, and, as Sartre says, free. Indeed, in a world where the subjectivity is the starting point, "it is impossible for man to transcend human subjectivity" (16-17), and therefore, man is "condemned to be free" (52).
Existentialist humanism, as Sartre calls it, links intensely subjective experience of the world with human responsibility in and for the individual and shared, or intersubjective, experience of world, which is irredeemably contingent. Having said that "man is nothing else but what he makes of himself" (Sartre 15-17), Sartre now reminds "man that there is no law-maker [i.e., God] other than himself, and that in his forlornness [absolute subjectivity] he will decide by himself" (51). This links absolute freedom with absolute responsibility in and for the outcomes of intersubjective encounter. The subject exists in an environment in which he is "suddenly alone and without help, [yet] engaged in a world for which I bear the whole responsibility without being able, whatever I do, to tear myself away from this responsibility for an instant" (Sartre 57). This universe is also palpably godless, for "we find no values or commands to turn to which legitimize our conduct" (23).
Enter Marxism, which, like existentialsm, takes the cosmos as its subject. Marxist social theory was normative and revolutionary, calling for a break with all past ...