Philosopher, born in Gdansk, Poland. He studied at Göttingen and Berlin, then taught at Berlin (1820), where he boldly held his lectures at the same time as Hegel, whose ideas he rejected; but he failed to attract students. He then lived in retirement as a scholar at Frankfurt. His chief work, Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung (1819, The World as Will and Idea), emphasizes the central role of human will as the creative, primary factor in understanding. His conception of the will as a blind, irrational force led him to a rejection of Enlightenment doctrines and to pessimism. He eventually attracted attention with a collection of diverse essays and aphoristic writings, published under the title of Parerga und Paralipomena (1851), and subsequently influenced not only existentialism and other philosophical movements, but a range of writers and artists, such as Wagner, Tolstoy, Proust, and Mann.