“If life — the craving for which is the very essence of our being — were possessed of any positive intrinsic value, there would be no such thing as boredom at all: mere existence would satisfy us in itself, and we should want for nothing.”

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.