Portrait: AI-generated imagined likeness
Philosopher · Writer · translator
German philosopher. He viewed the world as a blind will, and his pessimistic ideas influenced philosophy and literature from the 19th century onwards. He is a person who understands another current of modern thought.
View in catalogDanzig
Birth
Frankfurt
Work
The World as Will and Representation
1818
Book
Nineteenth-century European pessimism
1818–1860
Movement · Participant
Map: Natural Earth (PD)
Born in Danzig, he grew up in an international merchant family. He studied at a time when Kant's philosophy, Indian thought, and Romanticism were spreading, and created his own unique metaphysics.
In ``The World as Will and Representation,'' he considered the will, which is more fundamental than reason, to be the essence of the world. He positioned art and asceticism as temporary relief from suffering, and influenced later thinkers.
Schopenhauer is known for his fierce criticism of Hegel's philosophy. Although it received limited recognition during his lifetime, it was widely read by literary scholars and artists in the late 19th century.
Studying Schopenhauer reveals that modern European thought deepened not only a belief in progress and reason, but also an interest in suffering, desire, and the unconscious. It also resonated in literature. It can also be used for comparison with surrounding areas from the same era.
