Being and Nothingness Being and Nothingness Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology (), sometimes published with the subtitle A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology, is a 1943 book by the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, in which the author asserts the individual's existence as prior to the individual's essence ("existence precedes essence") and seeks to demonstrate that free will exists. While a prisoner of war in 1940 and 1941, Sartre read Martin Heidegger's "Being and Time" (1927). Heidegger's work, an ontological investigation through the lens and method of Husserlian phenomenology (Edmund Husserl was Heidegger's teacher), initiated Sartre's own philosophical enquiry. Though influenced by Heidegger,
The Art of Being Right the 38 stratagems described by Schopenhauer, in the order of their appearance in the book: The Art of Being Right The Art of Being Right: 38 Ways to Win an Argument (also Eristic Dialectic: The Art of Winning an Argument; German: "Eristische Dialektik: Die Kunst, Recht zu behalten"; 1831) is an acidulous and sarcastic treatise written by the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer in sardonic deadpan. In it, Schopenhauer examines a total of thirty-eight methods of showing up one's opponent in a debate. He introduces his essay with the idea that philosophers have concentrated in ample measure on the rules of