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Well, since we're playing at channeling dead people, I'll post some writing from a neglected Marxist who had an interesting proposition or two about the issue at hand. My posting of the writing by no means constitutes a product endorsement of all the terms brought to bear on the issue:
What do we mean by saying that existence precedes essence? We mean that man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world – and defines himself afterwards. If man as the existentialist sees him is not definable, it is because to begin with he is nothing. He will not be anything until later, and then he will be what he makes of himself. Thus, there is no human nature, because there is no God to have a conception of it. Man simply is. Not that he is simply what he conceives himself to be, but he is what he wills, and as he conceives himself after already existing – as he wills to be after that leap towards existence. Man is nothing else but that which he makes of himself.
^^^^^ CB; Speaking of channeling dead people, Marx's famous quote seems to state exactly the opposite of Sartre's idea, i.e. that channeling dead people precedes existence:
"Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living."
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/18th-brumaire/ch01.htm
CB: In fact, that in humans which "simply exists" is their biological or natural selves. Biological sexual intercourse and conception precede existence. Then the resultant new born babies are completely natural beings. (These are the types of basics Marx and Engels had to explain to the Germans in _The German Ideology_; Sartre might have spent too much time in Germany) Human _nature_ or natural being precedes existence.To begin with humans are natural beings. When they "surge up" from crawling it is onto two feet, i.e. they are bipedal. They learn to talk and use symbols and acquire culture for which they have species unique biological, i.e. natural, capacity.
Part of human _nature_ or natural being precedes existence or_ is_ what Sartre calls "simple(y) exist(ence)." Human nature is the premise for human existence.
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"Thus, there is no human nature, because there is no God to have a conception of it."
^^^^^ CB: Didn't Darwin debunk this ? The theory of natural selection replaces theological teleology. Human nature is the product of natural selection like the natures of all other species.
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"Man simply is"
^^^^^ CB; Nothing come from nothing.