Pessimism: A History and a Criticism

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

Leopardi's Operette morali, short dialogues where nature, death, fashion and a stray Icelander debate whether life is worth living. Witty, bleak and beautifully written, a classic of 19th-century pessimism in Charles Edwardes' translation.

Giacomo Leopardi