This is the first of three volumes of Arthur Schopenhauer’s masterwork The World as Will and Idea (1818). Schopenhauer argues that the world we perceive is “idea” — representation shaped by the mind — while its inner essence is a blind, striving “will” that underlies all phenomena and is the source of endless suffering, escapable only through art and the denial of the will.
This free EPUB edition has been carefully cleaned and formatted for modern e-readers. A profound and pessimistic system that drew on Kant and Eastern thought, Schopenhauer’s philosophy deeply influenced Nietzsche, Wagner, Freud, and much of modern art and ideas.