His masterwork "The World as Will and Representation" commented on the theories of his fellow German, Immanuel Kant.
Kant said it was impossible to grasp anything about the real or "noumenal" world because we are trapped in our perceptions. Not so, Schopenhauer retorted. We can sense within our every mental action the workings of our will, which he termed "the will to live", and conceived as a constant struggle to survive and reproduce - life was "a constantly prevented dying" just as walking is "a constantly prevented falling".
The will that drives us makes us unhappy. The good news is we can escape A respite is possible in aesthetic contemplation: as we gaze at a painting, we forget ourselves and are briefly happy (or at least not unhappy). A more permanent solution is a quasi-Buddhist withdrawal from the daily struggle, living like a hermit. Schopenhauer was one of the first Western philosophers to pay attention to the traditions of Eastern religions.
But Schopenhauer despised women and Jews. He thought women were like children. However, he did say this. I wonder which woman so impressed him with her capacity to "grow"? I don't think I understand what is meant by "grow".
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