“How very paltry and limited the normal human intellect is, and how little lucidity there is in the human consciousness, may be judged from the fact that, despite the ephemeral brevity of human life, the uncertainty of our existence and the countless enigmas which press upon us from all sides, everyone does not continually and ceaselessly philosophize, but that only the rarest of exceptions do.”

German philosopher and writer

Arthur Schopenhauer was a German philosopher and writer. Active in the 19th century, he is often called the “Philosopher of Pessimism.” He is best known for his 1818 book The World as Will and Representation. In that work, Schopenhauer presents the visible world as a expression of a blind, irrational will beneath appearances. He built his philosophy on Kant’s transcendental idealism, then shaped it into an atheistic system of metaphysics and ethics that stood against the German idealism of his time.