Being and Nothingness that among them the work usually went unread. 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
Philosopher in Meditation and titling it "Philosopher in Contemplation" or "Philosopher with an Open Book". Yet the real credit for the attribution to Koninck should go to John C. Van Dyke, who wrote: "In fact, one may be heretical enough to think that someone like Koninck or Dou may have painted them..." The subject matter and details of the Koninck picture seem to have been directly inspired by a Rembrandt etching dated 1642 and representing "St. Jerome in a dark chamber" (Bartsch 105), which is the only other known work by Rembrandt that features a complete helical staircase. The traditional iconography of the