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
For the Time Being in the contemporary world. Auden wrote the poem to be set to music by Benjamin Britten, but it was far too long for this purpose, and Britten set only two fragments, including one ("Shepherd's Carol") that Auden dropped before the work was published. The poem is dedicated to the memory of Auden's mother, Constance Rosalie Bicknell Auden. For the Time Being "For the Time Being: A Christmas Oratorio", is a long poem by W. H. Auden, written 1941-42, and first published in 1944. It was one of two long poems included in Auden's book also titled For the Time Being,