The first millenium Church saw that the Eucharist makes the Church. In the second millenium, we forgot that, but knew that the Church makes the Eucharist. Both are true. Both make us.

This is the wisdom of the Catholic faith. It is distilled and presented in a clear and stimulating manner in McPartlan's short book. I'm sure I'll refer to McPartlan's work for a long time.

In this way, he is like Nietszche (which he himself claims). He much prefers to be a disruptive force, or a catalyst for change and discourse than a scientific systematic philosopher. In many ways, this is his relationship to the Western Marxists (and Sartre, whose existentialism does owe a great deal to Nietzsche, which Foucault seemed to be proud of in some ways...i'm referring to both thinker's appreciation for Nietzsche). Sartre maintains subjectivity, and the ability of the subject to choose its own history, much as Engels asserts in Marxism, however, he admits like Marx claims, that there are a series of pre-determined factors that influence those choices (within the subjects environment). Flynn explores the TRUE subjectivity of existentialism...not as a will to power (though to an extent, this certainly is the case), but as the starting point for the intersubjectivity that molds our history, and its relationship to the Marxist project that elucidates the ills of captialism, the force behind the mode of production (which is the will of the people), and how we construct our history and discourse, and what that means about ourselves as individuals and our place in the world. Ultimately, reading Flynn's incredible and original book will offer a more thorough, documented and scholarly interpretation. He even pulls on some more obscure later Sartre (like the oft forgotten biography of Flaubert, "The Family Idiot"). His research is astounding, his understading of this very difficult material astounding. He makes a cohesive synthesis between existentialism and post-modernism, better than the post-modernists themselves.