An Introduction to Arthur Schopenhauer

Arthur Schopenhauer, the father of philosophical pessimism, was born in Danzig, Poland in 1788 to a merchant father and a novelist mother. As an adolescent, Schopenhauer traveled throughout Europe, living for a time in France, which he adored and later looked back on as the happiest period of his life, and Britain, which he detested for what he viewed as its strict, anti-intellectual religiosity. During this time…