When looking at Schopenhauer, not talking about Schopenhauer's thoughts, nor about his other talents, Schopenhauer himself is actually a very interesting person.

Unlike many philosophers, Schopenhauer was born into a fairly wealthy family, and he was raised with something that many people could not achieve in their lifetimes. However, it is such a rich family who has established his own tragic philosophical system.

Schopenhauer pioneered modern Western philosophy with his voluntarist philosophy, and his theoretical goal and central link was his pessimistic lunism, that is, the theory of the pain of the generated will. Schopenhauer, who claimed that his philosophy proceeded from Kant's philosophy, formulated his famous proposition "The world is my appearance". to think that this is a truth, a truth that is valid for any living and knowing being; But only man can incorporate it into an introspective, abstract consciousness. And, if man does do this, then there is philosophical reflection in him.

Starting from the subject, Schopenhauer came to the conclusion that "the world is my appearance", and he believed that the fundamental purpose and true significance of philosophical research lies in the understanding of "things in themselves". That is, the essence behind the appearance. In order to understand the "things in themselves", one must go further into the realm of the subjective world, and there will be no answer from the outside world. "Here we have seen that the will from the outside is everywhere, not only human beings, but also animals, plants, and even inorganic matter. All things in the world, though they are different in phenomena, are essentially the same thing in their inner nature, and that thing is the will. The difference is that there are high and low degrees of will, and they form different levels, and the will in human beings is the most perfect, the most developed, and the most distinct. The will itself is free, there is no law, it is completely readable and absolutely free. The most important and wooden-like characteristic of the will is that it has no purpose, no end, it is an endless pursuit.

Schopenhauer, after concluding that the will is desire, went on to think that desire is pain. The will, which is the essence of the world, is an "unquenchable blind impulse", a purposeless, endless, insatiable **, so all life is suffering in nature. Because the impulse is endless, and its satisfaction is always temporary and limited. Unfulfilled is pain; And if a ** is satisfied, a new ** will follow, never satisfied, and it is also painful; Even if ** is completely satisfied, it brings terrible emptiness and boredom, and it is also not free from pain. On the other hand, the more perfect the phenomenon of the will, the more pronounced the suffering. Plants are painless. The pain of the lowest animals is very weak. Vertebrates have a well-developed nervous system and have a higher ability to feel pain. When it comes to people, the pain reaches its peak. And for Renmi, the more developed the intellect, the deeper the suffering, so genius is the most painful. "So any life is completely between wanting and achieving it." So life is like a pendulum, always swinging back and forth between pain and boredom. In Schopenhauer's view, life is actually a tragedy, and it is only in the details that there is a comedy in the name.

Therefore, life swings back and forth like a pendulum between pain and boredom, and in fact pain and boredom are the two final ingredients of life. Life is a miserable existence that strives to get rid of scarcity but cannot be eliminated in a painful state of deprivation.

Schopenhauer was fundamentally a philosopher of life, and he started from the voluntaristic and pessimistic philosophy of life, and expressed the tragedy, absurdity, hypocrisy, and misfortune that are unique to life. Although this subjective experience is an individual surname from the philosopher himself, with a very obvious surname color, it is in fact his own unique understanding and feeling of society and his own experience. Schopenhauer's pessimistic conclusion about the suffering of the will lies in his unique feelings and profound experiences of the consequences of the prevailing utilitarian values of capitalism at that time, as well as his personal unfortunate experience of a life of lack of love and being loved.

His father, whom he most respects, committed suicide as a child, and his relationship with his mother and her family was not good. He was withdrawn and arrogant from an early age. Being arrogant and having a hard time getting along with others makes it difficult for him to experience the happiness of loving and being loved throughout his life, and therefore it is difficult to draw optimistic conclusions about happiness in life. Schopenhauer had great confidence and hope in himself. He prides himself on being a genius who will build great achievements. But reality shattered his expectations and dreams again and again. Although he was extremely conceited about his doctrines and ideas, his writings were not well received by the publishing houses, and even after they were published, they were ignored by the readers for many years. This series of misfortunes caused Schopenhauer's soul to suffer greatly, and he suffered in agony. As a result, he has a very deep knowledge and experience of pain.

Schopenhauer lived in an era when the capitalist system was established in Western Europe one after another, and capitalism developed rapidly. In line with this, the utilitarian values of capitalism have gradually been established and prevailed.2 The fundamental starting point of this utilitarian value is to start from the self, be self-centered, and put personal interests first. In order to pursue personal interests, people are constantly competing and fighting with each other by unscrupulous means.

Therefore, the struggle to the death between individuals premised on self-interest is also bound to take on the most terrible form. Everyone wants not only to take what he has from others, but also to slightly increase the happiness of his own side. will not hesitate to do so at the cost of the entire happiness or the entire life that others have destroyed. Schopenhauer, with his extremely keen sense, understood ahead of time that everything in capitalist society starts from the self, is self-centered, and pursues personal interests. leads to the cruel and negative aspects of fierce competition, thus profoundly excavating the tragic side of life. This negative and pessimistic understanding and feeling are combined with his starting from the self and from the will of the self, and he will inevitably lead to the conclusion of pessimism in life.

Schopenhauer believed that temporary liberation can be achieved through philosophical contemplation, artistic aesthetic activity, and moral cultivation. Because philosophical contemplation, artistic aesthetic activities and moral cultivation can make people forget their material interests, improve their spiritual realm, free themselves from slavery, and think purely about things to get rid of pain. But permanent liberation can only be achieved through the "negation of the will." Because the "affirmation of the will" is the root of all suffering, the basis of pessimism, the complete negation of the will is the fundamental way out of suffering. The so-called negation of the will is to suppress all instincts and wear out all agitation. Love, cancel all desires, paralyze all feelings, make emotions absolutely calm, and finally reach a state of "no desire".

Schopenhauer believed that when the will is extinguished, all the pain, fear, and exciting hope of never dying that arise from the impulse of the will are also extinguished. In its place will be the peace of mind that is above all reason, the emotion of the ancient well, the deep tranquility and the unshakable self-satisfaction and happiness. Schopenhauer called the state attained by this utter negation of the will "nothing". With the negation and cancellation of the will, the world of appearances as the objectification of the will is also canceled, so that all that remains is nothing. From voluntarism to pessimism, and from pessimism to nihilism, this is the end of Schopenhauer's philosophy of will.

Starting from the basic proposition that life is suffering, Schopenhauer believed that the wisdom of life lies in truly recognizing that human surnames are sinister, that life is originally a tragedy, that everything in the world, including fame, fortune, power, and so on, is just a fleeting and fleeting thing, and that the so-called happiness is nothing but the enjoyment of life free from pain and helpless. Therefore, in his view, people should abstain from everything, abandon all worldly interests and demands, remove all real life and realistic ideals and purposes, abandon all rational surnames and scientific concepts, and all moral norms based on rational surnames and enter the realm of selflessness. In this way, people can transcend the phenomenal world and enter the world of the will as a thing in themselves, and only then can they have their own freedom.

Although Schopenhauer is a thoroughly tragic philosopher, many of his ideas have made significant contributions in the history of the development of Western philosophy, and established his important position in the history of philosophy. However, as an ordinary person, he was not happy at all, and the pain and misery he experienced in his personal life laid an important foundation for his philosophical thoughts. From voluntarism to pessimism, and from pessimism to nihilism, this is the fate of Schopenhauer's philosophy of will, and perhaps his own final destiny in life.

In a sense, life is full of suffering, not all people are born with a good family, a lot of wealth, and a lot of knowledge, and people who really have these are not necessarily happy, because they want more wealth, more beautiful things. And people who don't have these things have to work hard to find these things. In the process of finding and realizing our dreams, life is full of suffering, when we go through our own efforts, after experiencing the ups and downs of life, we will know how to cherish our hard-won everything. We always encourage ourselves to be content, to cherish what we have when we get enough, not to pursue too much what we can't get, and to learn to be content with our real life. From the perspective of human existence, Schopenhauer's philosophy is also contemplative, which teaches people to conform to their own nature, learn to satisfy their will in life, and thus obtain a certain kind of happiness. It is precisely because of the infinite ** of many people that they hide their own happiness.