Being and Nothingness was "a pretentious metaphysical thesis" and "principally an exercise in misusing the verb 'to be'." The philosopher William Barrett, writing in "Irrational Man" (1958), described "Being and Nothingness" as "a great, uneven, brilliant and verbose tome". He noted Sartre's debts to Heidegger, but nevertheless credited him with originality. He criticized Sartre for neglecting Heidegger's "notion of the truth of Being", his understanding of what it means for a subject or object to be. In his view, Sartre failed to "deal with the problem of truth in a radical and existential way", instead viewing truth in "the ordinary intellectualistic sense that
Peter Osborne (philosopher) 1988. Entitled "The carnival of philosophy: philosophy, politics and science in Hegel and Marx", it no doubt formed some of the material for the more recently published "How to Read Marx" (Granta magazine, 2005), the fifth chapter of which recalls its title. A central influence on Osborne's thought has been the work of German philosopher Theodor W. Adorno, who figures in his early essays concerning the problem of modernity and the crisis in the visual arts Osborne's first book, "The Politics of Time: Modernity and Avant-Gard"e (Verso Books, 1995, reprinted 2011) was reflective of his general understanding of the modern