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
Brian O'Shaughnessy (philosopher) He is buried in Highgate Cemetery in north London in the first section on the left immediately upon entering the Eastern Cemetery. Brian O'Shaughnessy (philosopher) Brian Joseph O'Shaughnessy (10 September 1925 – 7 July 2010) was an Australian philosopher of mind, who lived in London and taught at King's College London. He published influential papers on the nature of physical action and the will, at a time when this was quite unfashionable. He was born in Kew, a suburb of Melbourne in Australia, where his father was a doctor. He studied at Xavier College and then attended Melbourne University, firstly