The World as Will and Representation — Selections
Schopenhauer’s The World as Will and Representation (1818) presents a metaphysics of thoroughgoing pessimism: at the root of reality is a blind, irrational, striving Will, and human existence is characterized by suffering, frustration, and unfulfilled desire. For Schopenhauer, the problem of evil is not a puzzle to be solved but a fundamental feature of existence — the world is not the creation of a benevolent God but the expression of a purposeless force. He was one of the first Western philosophers to engage seriously with Buddhist thought, and saw in the Buddhist diagnosis of suffering a confirmation of his own. Nietzsche, Tolstoy, and Freud all read him carefully.