Arthur Schopenhauer was a German philosopher celebrated for his atheistic pessimism and philosophical clarity. At age 25, he published his doctoral dissertation, On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, which examined the fundamental question of whether reason alone can unlock answers about the world.

Schopenhauer's most influential work, The World as Will and Representation, emphasized the role of man's basic motivation, which Schopenhauer called will. His analysis of will led him to conclude that emotional, physical, and sexual desires can never be fulfilled. Consequently, he favored a lifestyle of negating human desires, akin to the teachings of ancient Greek Stoic philosophers, Buddhism, and Vedanta.

Known for his 1818 work The World as Will and Representation (expanded in 1844), Schopenhauer characterized the phenomenal world as the manifestation of a blind and irrational noumenal will. Building on the transcendental idealism of Immanuel Kant, he developed an atheistic metaphysical and ethical system that rejected the contemporaneous ideas of German idealism.

Schopenhauer was among the first Western philosophers to affirm significant tenets of Indian philosophy, such as asceticism, denial of the self, and the notion of the world-as-appearance. His work is an exemplary manifestation of philosophical pessimism. Though his work failed to garner substantial attention during his lifetime, he had a posthumous impact across various disciplines, including philosophy, literature, and science. His writings on aesthetics, morality, and psychology have influenced many thinkers and artists.