Understand desire; make room for compassion.
Works, testimonies and further readings are distinguished. Dates refer to composition or first publication, as specified in each entry.
Books published during Schopenhauer’s lifetime are listed, including both World volumes, the separate ethical essays and their collection, and both Parerga volumes. Revisions are identified; Parerga essays are named on their collection pages. Posthumous manuscripts, lectures, journals and correspondence are distinguished from authorized books. The fragment inventory indexes all 38 stratagems in an identified edition of Eristic Dialectic, but remains partial for the entire Nachlass. The correspondence indexes 867 numbered units in the 1929–1942 Gebhardt/Hübscher edition, including incoming and outgoing letters; dates and addressees still require critical transcription.
Explore letters and fragmentsThe dissertation distinguishes four forms of the relationship between something and its ground: becoming, knowing, being and acting. It prevents the question “why?” from concealing fundamentally different intellectual operations.
Explore this workSchopenhauer explains color perception through retinal activity and its qualitative division. He continues his exchanges with Goethe while assigning the perceiving subject a distinctive theoretical role.
Explore this workFour books move from the world as an object for a subject to will, then to art and ethics. The body provides distinctive access to willing, which Schopenhauer subsequently extends throughout nature.
Explore this workFifty chapters revisit the first volume’s four books, extending discussions of knowledge, nature, art, sexuality, death and denial of willing. They develop the system rather than merely repeating it.
Explore this workThis Latin reformulation of the color theory explains colors through retinal activity. It shows Schopenhauer adapting an inquiry initially intended for German readers to international scholarly circulation.
Explore this workSchopenhauer seeks confirmations of his metaphysics in physiology, anatomy, botany and other fields. The book connects scientific results with a philosophical interpretation of nature as manifestation of will.
Explore this workIts thirty-one chapters concern: 1 Philosophy and Method; 2 Logic and Dialectic; 3 Intellect; 4 Thing-in-Itself and Appearance; 5 Pantheism; 6 Philosophy and Natural Science; 7 Colours; 8 Ethics; 9 Jurisprudence and Politics; 10 Indestructibility of Our True Nature by Death; 11 Vanity of Existence; 12 Suffering of the World; 13 Suicide; 14 Affirmation and Denial of the Will-to-Live; 15 Religion; 16 Sanskrit Literature; 17 Archaeology; 18 Mythology; 19 Beauty and Aesthetics; 20 Judgment, Criticism, Approval and Fame; 21 Learning and Scholars; 22 Thinking for Oneself; 23 Authorship and Style; 24 Reading and Books; 25 Language and Words; 26 Psychological Remarks; 27 Women; 28 Education; 29 Physiognomy; 30 Noise; 31 Similes, Parables and Fables.
Explore this workVisit the source(new tab)This manuscript examines thirty-eight stratagems for winning debate independently of truth. It identifies shifts of thesis, equivocation, personal attacks and appeals to authority that divert inquiry.
Explore this workVisit the source(new tab)Notebooks, drafts, reading notes and late writings reveal the system’s development. Critical editions distinguish early manuscripts, philosophical confrontations, Berlin notebooks, Frankfurt writings and annotations in books; Senilia belongs within this corpus, alongside On the Interesting and On the Mutilation of the German Language.
Explore this workVisit the source(new tab)The teaching manuscripts present theory of knowledge and the metaphysics of nature, beauty and morals. They reveal how Schopenhauer intended to turn his system into a pedagogical sequence.
Explore this workVisit the source(new tab)The youthful notebooks describe European journeys, landscapes, institutions and encounters. They document an emotional and social education preceding the system, including experiences of inequality and visible suffering.
Explore this workLetters document family relationships, intellectual exchanges, publishing negotiations and reception of the system. They show concretely how an author manages resources, defends books and develops a readership.
Explore this workVisit the source(new tab)Schopenhauer translated the three hundred maxims of Baltasar Gracián’s Oráculo manual into German. The project demonstrates his interest in practical judgment, prudence and concise forms of reflection.
Explore this workVisit the source(new tab)The essay distinguishes doing what one wants from being able to want differently. Actions follow necessarily from motives meeting character, while responsibility requires investigation on another level.
Explore this workSchopenhauer investigates what motivates a genuinely moral action. Criticizing the imperative and rational foundations of Kantian ethics, he proposes compassion as immediate access to another being’s suffering.
Explore this workThe collection joins On the Freedom of the Will and On the Basis of Morality with polemical prefaces. Their juxtaposition connects determined action, responsibility and compassionate motivation without erasing their different approaches.
Explore this workVolume I contains six essays: Sketch of a History of the Doctrine of the Ideal and the Real; Fragments for the History of Philosophy; On University Philosophy; Transcendent Speculation on the Apparent Deliberateness in the Fate of the Individual; Essay on Spirit Seeing and Everything Connected Therewith; Aphorisms on the Wisdom of Life.
Explore this workVisit the source(new tab)This extended Parerga essay examines what one is, what one has and what one represents to others. Counsels, maxims and distinctions between life stages provisionally pursue an existence as tolerable as possible.
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