In this episode of pplpod, we explore the life and mind of Arthur Schopenhauer, the 19th-century German thinker often cited as the father of philosophical pessimism. We trace his journey from a wealthy merchant’s son in Danzig to a solitary intellectual in Frankfurt, examining the family trauma—including the suspected suicide of his father—that shaped his gloomy outlook. We also dive into his notoriously toxic relationship with his mother, the popular novelist Johanna Schopenhauer, who eventually refused to live with him because of his "propensity to pick holes in other people".

We break down his magnum opus, The World as Will and Representation, in which he argued that the universe is the manifestation of a blind, irrational, and ceaseless striving he called the "Will". You’ll learn how Schopenhauer became one of the first Western ...