Arthur Schopenhauer (; 22 February 1788 – 21 September 1860) was a
German philosopher. He is best known for his 1818 work
The World as Will and Representation, in which he characterizes the
phenomenal world, and consequently all human action, as the product of a blind, insatiable, and malignant metaphysical will. Proceeding from the
transcendental idealism of
Immanuel Kant, Schopenhauer developed an
atheistic metaphysical and ethical system that has been described as an exemplary manifestation of
philosophical pessimism, rejecting the contemporaneous
post-Kantian philosophies of
German idealism. Schopenhauer was among the first thinkers in
Western philosophy to share and affirm significant tenets of
Eastern philosophy (e.g.,
asceticism, the world-as-appearance), having initially arrived at similar conclusions as the result of his own philosophical work. His writing on
aesthetics,
morality, and
psychology would exert important influence on thinkers and artists throughout the 19th and 20th centuries.