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The World as Will and Representation

Disciplines:
ethics
aesthetics
metaphysics

Summary

Arthur Schopenhauer's masterwork arguing that the world is fundamentally will — blind, insatiable striving — and that salvation from suffering comes through aesthetic contemplation and ascetic denial.

Core Contribution

Develops the two-aspect view (will/representation), the analysis of all life as suffering driven by will, the hierarchy of arts (music as purest expression of will), and the ascetic denial of will as highest wisdom.

Historical Influences

Arthur Schopenhauer

Intellectual Lineage

No conceptual lineage found.

Allied Works

Critique of Pure Reason Thus Spoke Zarathustra The Birth of Tragedy

Contemporaries & Peers

No recorded contemporaries.

Minds Influenced

No recorded minds influenced.

Intellectual Posterity

No conceptual posterity found.

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