Born in Danzig, Schopenhauer, because of a large inheritance from his father, was able to retire early, and, as a private scholar, was able to devote his life to the study of philosophy. He was a great conversationalist, but was a pessimist. Schopenhauer did not believe that people had individual wills but were rather simply part of a vast and single will that pervades the universe: that the feeling of separateness is nothing but an illusion. It was Schopenhauer's view that through the contemplation of art, one "might lose contact with the turbulent stream of detailed existence around us."

His work later influenced Neitzsche.