Being and Time explanation of the understanding preceding any other way of knowing, such as the use of logic, theory, specific regional ontology. At the same time, there is no access to being other than via beings themselves—hence pursuing the question of being inevitably means questioning a being with regard to its being. Heidegger argues that a true understanding of being ("Seinsverständnis") can only proceed by referring to particular beings, and that the best method of pursuing being must inevitably, he says, involve a kind of hermeneutic circle, that is (as he explains in his critique of prior work in the field of
Being and Nothingness sexual act". The critic Camille Paglia, writing in "Sexual Personae" (1990), equated Sartre's term for slime, "le visqueux", with "Dionysus' swamp, the fleshy muck of the generative matrix." The philosopher Thomas Baldwin, writing in "The Oxford Companion to Philosophy" (1995), described "Being and Nothingness" as a work of pessimism. He wrote that Sartre's argument that Freud's theory of repression is internally flawed is based on a misunderstanding of Freud, and that Sartre's attempts to adapt Freud's ideas are of greater interest. The director Richard Eyre recalled that "Being and Nothingness" was popular among British students in the 1960s, but suggests