The World as Will and Representation

⚖The case for it

Ignore the syllabus and open it anyway. Schopenhauer's claim is that everything alive, you included, gets driven by a purposeless craving that nothing satisfies, and the claim lands without any preparation. His chapters about art, above all music, are the payoff: lose yourself in a piece of music and for a moment you want nothing, the closest thing to peace he will grant anyone. The pessimism comes out invigorating rather than gloomy, the German plain and often funny. Nietzsche and Freud spent careers arguing with him. A page or two shows you why.

— the honest librarian

✕The case against

Schopenhauer demands homework: he tells you, in the preface, to read his doctoral dissertation first, master Kant, and then read this book twice. Take him at his word and you owe him months. The system itself is one intuition (blind Will behind everything) unfolded across a thousand pages, and the second volume mostly elaborates what the first already said.

— the honest librarian