No Need for Cheap Commentary Books Anymore. A Complete Dissection of the 200-Year-Old Strong Medicine, Schopenhauer (Part 1) [Revised Edition]
【Genre】Philosophy
日本語(original) | English version | 繁體中文（台灣）版 | Tiếng Việt
This article is a revised and more accessible version based on the piece I wrote between December 28 and 29, 2025.
Have you ever heard the name of the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer?
I have decided to once again treat this thinker with care.
One of the reasons is that I want to explore with you the thought of Plato, who deeply influenced Schopenhauer.
Schopenhauer’s philosophy was heavily influenced by the ancient Greek thinker Plato.
Reading him with this connection in mind should make it resonate even more deeply.
And after this trilogy, I would like to start a new series on Plato’s question of “What is the mind?”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) was a 19th-century German philosopher.
(public domain)
When people hear his name, many immediately associate him with the dark image that “life is nothing but suffering.”
Some even understand him as “a complete pessimist who simply denied life,” but this is not accurate.
While he sharply saw through the suffering of life, he also presented concrete paths of salvation: contemplation through art, compassion, and the denial of the will.
Why Schopenhauer Now?
The modern world we live in is overflowing with desire and information.
The moment you wake up and look at your smartphone, someone else’s brilliant life jumps into your eyes.
Even after eating something delicious, the next desire immediately arises. Even after achieving one goal, a new one appears.
In the midst of this repetition, is there not a moment when you feel, “Is this really okay?”
Schopenhauer had already seen through this mechanism about 200 years ago.
In his main work, The World as Will and Representation (Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung), he clearly revealed the fundamental cause of human suffering as the blind force called “Will.”
Simply put, at the bottom of our hearts, there is a power that constantly seeks something.
When that desire is satisfied, we feel temporary satisfaction, but soon the next desire arises. If it is not satisfied, suffering is born.
— This is exactly like our daily lives today.
“The World Is My Representation”
One of the important ideas that forms the starting point of Schopenhauer’s thought is:
“The world is my representation” (Die Welt ist meine Vorstellung).
What does this mean?
It means that the world we see with our eyes, hear with our ears, and touch with our hands is actually perceived through our own cognition (representation).
It is not things themselves, but how our mind perceives them that determines the shape of the world — that is the perspective.
For example, the same event can be felt completely differently by different people. On a rainy day, some feel “depressed,” while others feel “quiet and calming.”
This difference is precisely due to the difference in our “representations.”
This way of thinking can be a trigger to notice small movements of the mind in daily life.
“ How am I perceiving the world right now?” — just stopping for a moment like this can create a small blank space in the heart.
In the next part (Middle), I will continue to talk about the specific mechanism of suffering brought about by this “Will,” and the path to creating some distance from it.
Akira
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