Work

The World as Will and Representation

Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung

Arthur Schopenhauer·1818·German

About this text

Schopenhauer's single great work, written in his twenties. The world, he argues, is our representation on one side and blind will on the other: a ceaseless, directionless striving that knows no satisfaction. Art, pity, and asceticism offer the only exits. It was ignored on publication and became famous forty years later.

The world is my representation: this is a truth valid for every living and knowing being, though man alone can bring it into reflective, abstract consciousness. If he really does so, philosophical discernment has dawned on him. It then becomes clear and certain to him that he does not know a sun and an earth, but only an eye that sees a sun, a hand that feels an earth.

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