Studies in Pessimism

Gathered from Schopenhauer’s later writings, these essays set out his famously bleak view of existence with unusual clarity and bite. He argues that life swings between pain and boredom, that happiness is mostly the absence of suffering, and that the will driving all living things guarantees dissatisfaction. Across pieces on the vanity of existence, the sorrows of the world, death, and human character, he writes as a plainspoken moralist rather than a system builder, which is why these short essays have stayed in print for well over a century. Bracing, witty, and unafraid to give offense, they offer the quickest way into his thought for anyone new to it.