Arthur Schopenhauer
German philosopher (1788-1860)
Arthur Schopenhauer (22 February 1788 – 21 September 1860), also known as the “Philosopher of Pessimism”, was a German philosopher and writer. He is known for his 1818 work The World as Will and Representation (expanded in 1844), which characterizes the phenomenal world as the manifestation of a blind and irrational noumenal will. Building on the transcendental idealism of Immanuel Kant, Schopenhauer developed an atheistic, metaphysical and ethical system that rejected the contemporaneous ideas of German idealism.
Schopenhauer was among the first philosophers in the Western tradition to share and affirm significant tenets of Indian philosophy, such as asceticism, denial of the self, and the notion of the world-as-appearance. His work has been described as an exemplary manifestation of philosophical pessimism. Though his work failed to garner substantial attention during his lifetime, he had a posthumous impact across various disciplines, including philosophy, literature, and science. His writing on aesthetics, morality and psychology has influenced many thinkers and artists.
Early life
Arthur Schopenhauer was born on 22 February 1788, in Danzig (then part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth; present-day Gdańsk, Poland) on Heiliggeistgasse (present-day Św. Ducha 47), the son of Heinrich Floris Schopenhauer and his wife Johanna Schopenhauer (née Trosiener), both descendants of wealthy German patrician families. While they both came from Protestant backgrounds, they were not very religious; they supported the French Revolution and were republicans, cosmopolitans, and Anglophiles.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q38193. VIAF identifies the subject as 17229367. The Library of Congress control number is n80032764. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1788, 1860, 1818 and 1844.
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This entry incorporates text from “Arthur Schopenhauer” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.