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
George Dickie (philosopher) George Dickie (philosopher) George Dickie (born 12 August 1926 in Palmetto, Florida) is a Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at University of Illinois at Chicago. His specialities include aesthetics, philosophy of art and Eighteenth Century theories of taste. He received a BA from Florida State University in 1949 and a PhD from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1959. He was a Guggenheim Fellow in 1978. He served as President of the Illinois Philosophy Association (1990–91) and President of the American Society for Aesthetics (1993–94). He is an influential philosopher of art working in the analytical tradition. His institutional theory