Being and Nothingness 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 Sartre's own philosophical enquiry. Though influenced by Heidegger,
Robert Zimmer (philosopher) than a dozen languages (not yet in English). In 2010 he published a biography of Arthur Schopenhauer. He also translated a selection of essays by the 19th Century French critic and writer Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve. Zimmer is a follower of Critical rationalism. Together with Martin Morgenstern he wrote a short and popular biography of Karl Popper and edited the correspondence between Karl Popper and Hans Albert. Robert Zimmer (philosopher) Robert Zimmer (born October 25, 1953 in Trier, Germany) is a German philosopher and essayist who writes biographies and popular introductions to philosophy and to the history of philosophy. Robert Zimmer