Arthur Schopenhauer

Arthur Schopenhauer (22 February 1788 to 21 September 1860) was a German philosopher and writer whose life began in Danzig, then part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and now Gdańsk, Poland. He was born into wealthy German patrician families: his father, Heinrich Floris Schopenhauer, was a merchant, and his mother, Johanna Schopenhauer, later became part of Weimar’s literary society. His parents came from Protestant backgrounds but were not very religious. They supported the French Revolution, admired republican ideals, and were cosmopolitan Anglophiles.

Schopenhauer is best known for The World as Will and Representation, first published in 1818 and expanded in 1844. In that work, he characterized the phenomenal world as the manifestation of a blind and irrational noumenal will. Building on Immanuel Kant’s transcendental idealism, he developed an atheistic metaphysical and ethical system that rejected the German idealism of his own time. His work has often been described as an exemplary expression of philosophical pessimism.

His early years were marked by travel, languages, commerce, and strain within the family. As a child he spent two years in Le Havre with the family of his father’s business associate, learned French, and formed a lifelong friendship with Jean Anthime Grégoire de Blésimaire. In 1803 he accompanied his parents through Holland, Britain, France, Switzerland, Austria, and Prussia. His father gave him a choice between preparing for university or continuing a merchant education through travel. Schopenhauer chose travel, but later regretted it, finding merchant training tedious. His short stay at school in Wimbledon left him critical of Anglican religiosity, even though he retained a general Anglophilia.

The death of his father in 1805 left a lasting mark. Heinrich drowned in a canal near the family home in Hamburg, and although the death may have been accidental, his wife and son believed it was suicide. He had suffered from anxiety and depression, and Schopenhauer later recognized similar moodiness in himself. After two years as a merchant in honor of his father, Arthur turned toward study, encouraged by his mother. He attended the Ernestine Gymnasium in Gotha, though he left after writing a satirical poem about a schoolmaster. He later concentrated on his studies in Weimar, where his mother’s salon brought together writers, artists, intellectuals, and dignitaries, including Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

Schopenhauer was also among the first philosophers in the Western tradition to affirm important ideas from Indian philosophy, including asceticism, denial of the self, and the notion of the world as appearance. During his lifetime, his work did not gain substantial attention. After his death, however, his writing on aesthetics, morality, and psychology had an impact across philosophy, literature, and science, influencing many thinkers and artists. His words continue to attract readers because they face the darker side of existence plainly, without ornament, and ask what kind of wisdom might be possible in a world driven by blind will.