Summary of Schopenhauer's Philosophy

[Schopenhauer] was also an atheist. He did not believe in a personal, omnipotent God.

Instead, Schopenhauer believed that the essence of the universe is Being: a blind, irrational, unquenchable thirst to exist he called Wille zum Leben, and that everything we perceive is a representation of this Will to Live.

Because we ourselves are products of Will, we spend most of our lives trapped in a cycle of striving and boredom.

We're constantly willing ourselves to attain our goals, and when we do attain them, we're disappointed and move on to something else, again and again, until the ultimate disappointment of death.

To Schopenhauer, free will and real choice were cruel illusions, and desire a prison.

Brian Moriarty, Opinion: Brian Moriarty's Apology For Roger Ebert (March 15, 2011)

• atheism
• natural law
• nature
• philosophy
• science