Being and Time previous philosophies that had become entrenched and hidden within the theoretical attitude of the metaphysics of presence. This use of the word "Destruktion" is meant to signify not a negative operation but rather a positive transformation or recovery. In "Being and Time" Heidegger briefly undertakes a destructuring of the philosophy of René Descartes, but the second volume, which was intended to be a "Destruktion" of Western philosophy in all its stages, was never written. In later works Heidegger uses this approach to interpret the philosophies of Aristotle, Kant, Hegel, and Plato, among others. "Being and Time" is the major achievement
Being and Nothingness has been traditional with non-existential philosophers" and thereby remaining a Cartesian rationalist. Susan Sontag, writing in an essay in "The Supplement" to the "Columbia Spectator" that was later published in "Against Interpretation" (1966), praised Sartre's discussions of the body and concrete relations with others, identifying them as part of a French tradition of serious thought about problems of fundamental importance. John B. Vickery wrote that Sartre's work resembles Sir James George Frazer's "The Golden Bough" (1890) in the way its author "merges psychology and the concrete sense of fiction", although he considered it less readable than Frazer's work. The philosopher