Your complimentary articles

You’ve read all of your complimentary articles for this month. To have complete access to the thousands of philosophy articles on this site, please

If you are a subscriber please sign in to your account.

To buy or renew a subscription please visit the Shop.

If you are a print subscriber you can contact us to create an online account.

Kant & Co.

Schopenhauer

Roger Caldwell looks at the most pessimistic of philosophers.

If Leibniz, that great German figure of the Enlightenment, proclaimed that we live in the best of all possible worlds, Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) held that we live in one of the worst – one permeated through and through by suffering and death. He became an atheist in his teens, convinced that such a world as this could not have been created by an all-good being. “Life,” he was to declare, “is a wretched business. I’ve decided to spend my life trying to understand it.”

Not surprisingly, Schopenhauer had little regard for Leibniz – “a miserable little candlelight” he called him.

…