The World as Will and Representation

In 1818, a thirty-year-old philosopher published in Dresden a work the world received with near-total indifference: The World as Will and Representation (Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung). Arthur Schopenhauer was convinced he had deciphered the riddle of the world — and he was not mistaken about the importance of what he had written, only about the patience he would need. Decades of obscurity would pass before Europe recognised in him one of the most original thinkers of the nineteenth century: the philosopher who dared to assert that the essence of reality is not reason, progress, or spirit — but a blind, irrational, and insatiable drive called Will. ...