Arthur Schopenhauer

About this figure

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) was a German philosopher best known for The World as Will and Idea, a systematic work of metaphysics and ethics first published in 1818 and substantially expanded in a second edition in 1844, eventually growing to three volumes. Schopenhauer, the son of a merchant, initially trained for a business career before turning to philosophy, studying at the University of Gottingen and later Berlin, and drawing heavily on the philosophy of Kant, whose distinction between appearances and an underlying reality Schopenhauer reworked into his own central claim that the inner nature of the world is a blind, striving force he called Will, of which the world of everyday appearances, or Idea, is merely the outward expression.

Schopenhauer's philosophy was also shaped by his early engagement with translated Hindu and Buddhist texts, particularly the Upanishads, which he described as a great consolation of his life, and his ethical writings emphasized compassion and the renunciation of desire as responses to what he viewed as the inherently suffering character of existence.

Schopenhauer attempted an academic career at the University of Berlin, scheduling his lectures to compete directly with those of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, then the dominant figure in German philosophy; the attempt failed, as Schopenhauer's lectures drew few students, and he abandoned university teaching, developing an enduring animosity toward Hegel and academic philosophy generally. His work received little attention for decades, and he lived largely in Frankfurt in his later years, reclusive and increasingly embittered, until a wider readership began to discover his writing in the 1850s, bringing him late recognition shortly before his death in Frankfurt in 1860.

Written by Epoch Voices. Not the figure’s own words.