As the world of will and representation

Author: Schopenhauer
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-01-01
Features: The German philosopher Schopenhauer was a pioneer of life philosophy. He was highly sensitive to the suffering in the world, and as a result, his worldview was filled with pessimism. Schopenhauer dedicated his life to the study of Plato and Kant philosophy, while despising Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. The World as Will and Representation is Schopenhauer's philosophical masterpiece, divided into four parts: epistemology, natural philosophy, aesthetics, and ethics. Schopenhauer believed that "the world is my representation." The human mind can at most only manifest the external phenomena of the world, appearing as a series of successive things, and cannot fundamentally explain these things. In the vast world, only humans are unique because humans possess will. Will is human nature, the foundation of all things, and is singular, mysterious, transcendent of time and space, without cause or purpose, and unchangeable. In the phenomenal world, will manifests as an ever-ascending series of consciousness, perpetually engaged in the struggle between higher and lower forms without purpose, and is therefore inseparable from suffering and disaster. Art can only temporarily free people from the influence of will. True liberation can only come from "breaking the constraints of individuality." To a certain extent, his philosophy influenced vitalism, life philosophy, existentialist philosophy, and the concepts and methods of anthropologists through Nietzsche.