The Essential Schopenhauer: key selections from

What is the meaning of life? How should I live? Is there any purpose to the universe? Generations have turned to the great German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer because he tackled the big issues. His influence has extended not only to later philosophers--Nietzsche foremost among them--but across the most brilliant novelists, musicians, and artists of all disciplines. Schopenhauer believed that the world was a cold, absurd place. and that it was only by the force of an individual's Will that any meaning could be created. He also believed that the universe itself had a Will--a spiritual force many have likened to "The Way," spoken of by Taoists.

This new anthology contains key selections from The World as Will and Representation as well as other writings.

"Schopenhauer's philosophy has had a special attraction for those who wonder about life's meaning, along with those engaged in music, literature, and the visual arts. . . . Schopenhauer's influence has been strong among literary figures, which include poets, playwrights, essayists, novelists and historians such as Charles Baudelaire, Samuel Beckett, Jorge Luis Borges, Joseph Conrad, André Gide, Thomas Hardy, Stephane Mallarmé, Thomas Mann, Guy de Maupassant, Robert Musil, Edgar Allan Poe, Marcel Proust, Italo Svevo, Leo Tolstoy, Ivan Turgenev, W. B. Yeats, and Emile Zola."--from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy