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
Christian Wolff (philosopher) Christian Wolff (philosopher) Christian Wolff (less correctly Wolf, ; also known as Wolfius; ennobled as Christian Freiherr von Wolff; 24 January 1679 – 9 April 1754) was a German philosopher. Wolff was the most eminent German philosopher between Leibniz and Kant. His main achievement was a complete "oeuvre" on almost every scholarly subject of his time, displayed and unfolded according to his demonstrative-deductive, mathematical method, which perhaps represents the peak of Enlightenment rationality in Germany. Wolff was also the creator of German as the language of scholarly instruction and research, although he also wrote in Latin, so that an international