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,
George Dickie (philosopher) George Dickie (philosopher) George Dickie (born 12 August 1926 in Palmetto, Florida) is a Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at University of Illinois at Chicago. His specialities include aesthetics, philosophy of art and Eighteenth Century theories of taste. He received a BA from Florida State University in 1949 and a PhD from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1959. He was a Guggenheim Fellow in 1978. He served as President of the Illinois Philosophy Association (1990–91) and President of the American Society for Aesthetics (1993–94). He is an influential philosopher of art working in the analytical tradition. His institutional theory