Author

Books by Arthur Schopenhauer

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) was a German philosopher who developed a metaphysical system in which the fundamental reality underlying all phenomena is a blind, purposeless will, generating suffering as its inevitable product. His major work, The World as Will and Representation (1818), was largely ignored for decades, but his Parerga and Paralipomena (1851) — the source of these essays — brought him late fame. He was a significant influence on Nietzsche, Wagner, Freud, and many 20th-century writers. He lived as a comfortable bachelor in Frankfurt for the second half of his life, supported by his inheritance and attended by a succession of poodles.