Essays and Dialogues

Schopenhauer's essays on the suffering of the world, the vanity of existence and suicide, plus the parable of the porcupines. The shortest and most direct way into philosophical pessimism.

Arthur Schopenhauer

Schopenhauer's masterpiece, complete in one file. A blind, endless will drives everything, and life swings between pain and boredom. The founding work of philosophical pessimism, in the classic Haldane and Kemp translation.

Arthur Schopenhauer

The first full history of pessimism in English, from ancient laments to Schopenhauer and Hartmann. Sully explains what the pessimists claimed and then argues against them, so you get both the tradition and its critics.

James Sully