Arthur Schopenhauer (February 22, 1788 – September 21, 1860) was a German philosopher best known for his work The World as Will and Representation. Schopenhauer responded to and expanded upon Immanuel Kant's philosophy concerning the way in which we experience the world. His critique of Kant, his creative solutions to the problems of human experience, and his explication of the limits of human knowledge are among his most important achievements. His metaphysical theory is the foundation of his influential writings on psychology, aesthetics, ethics, and politics which influenced Friedrich Nietzsche, ner, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Sigmund Freud and others[1].

Arthur Schopenhauer was born in 1788 in the city of Danzig (Gdańsk) as the son of Heinrich Floris Schopenhauer and Johanna Schopenhauer,[2] who were both descendants of wealthy German middle class mercantile families in the city located on the Baltic Sea. In 1793, when Danzig was annexed from Poland by Prussia, Schopenhauer's family moved to another mercantile harbour city, Hamburg, where in 1805, Schopenhauer's father died. (Some speculate he committed suicide.[3]) Johanna, who was an author, moved to Weimar, then the centre of German literature. Because of a promise to pursue a business career, Schopenhauer remained in Hamburg. His disgust with this career, however, drove him away to join his mother in Weimar after only a year. He never got along with his mother; when the writer Goethe, who was a friend of Johanna Schopenhauer, told her that he thought her son was destined for great things, Johanna objected: she had never heard there could be two geniuses in a single family.
Schopenhauer as a youth
Schopenhauer as a youth