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
Being and Nothingness of metaphysics which denies or refuses grace inevitably ends by setting up in front of us the image of an atrophied and contradictory world where the better part of ourselves is finally unable to recognise itself." The philosopher Jean Wahl criticized Sartre's arguments about the topic of "nothing". The philosopher Frederick Copleston, writing in "A History of Philosophy" (1946–1986), described Sartre's view that all human actions are the result of free choice as "highly implausible", though he noted that Sartre had ways of defending his position. The British philosopher A.J. Ayer said that, apart from some psychological insights, the book