Arthur Schopenhauer was born in 1788 in the then free city of Danzig. His father was a rich merchant who admired Voltaire, his mother was a feminist. When Schopenhauer was five years old, Danzig was annexed to Prussia. The family moved to Hamburg because his father cold not abide the government of William II.

Schopenhauer, an only child, was given an international education in France, England, Austria and Zwitserland in preparation for the business career which his father assumed, although Chopenhauer disliked commerce and admired a studies life. When Arthus was seventeen, his father underwent a mental collapse and committed suicide.

He and his mother then went to Weimar, Germany. There schopenhauer became a friend of Goethe. When he turned twenty-one he left Weimar and studied medicine for two years. In 1811 he went to Berlin to take up philosophy. He spent the years from 1813 to 1818 in solitude, writing Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung (The World as Will and representation), his principal work in philosophy. When published this work was totally neglected by the press.

At this time Hegel was was the leading philosopher of Germany. Schopenhauer despised Hegel's philosophy because he thought is was just a great rational theory, but had nothing to do with real life and the place of human-beings in this world.

In 1819 he became a private teacher in the University of Bonn. He scheduled his lectures for the same hour as those of Hegel, trying to attract the pupils away from Hegel's. After one year, during which he failed to attract even a few students away from Hegel, he abandoned academic life.

From then he lived in Frankfurt and published books, which attracted little attention until a collection of Essays (1851), which included his famous denunciation of women and defense of suicide, caught on and aroused interest in his previous works. Schopenhauer is seen as the philosopher of pessimism. He didn't have trust in human-beings and thought the only entity we can base our ethics on is compassion. Human-beings are easily corrupted by power and are inherent bad, we are all driven by a sort of metaphysical Will.

He died in 1860.