In the First Book we considered representation only as such, which is to say only with respect to its general form. Of course when it comes to abstract representations (concepts), we are familiar with their content as well, since they acquire this content and meaning only through their connection to intuitive representation and would be worthless and empty without it. This is why we will have to focus exclusively on intuitive representation in order to learn anything about its content, its more precise determinations, or the configurations it presents to us. We will be particularly interested in discovering the true meaning of intuitive representation; we have only ever felt this meaning before, but this has ensured that the images do not pass by us strange and meaningless as they would otherwise necessarily have done; rather, they speak and are immediately understood and have an interest that engages our entire being.

We turn to mathematics, natural science and philosophy, each of which raises our hope that it might shed some light on the problem. – But first we find that philosophy is a many-headed monster with each head speaking a different language.

What I propose to do here is to specify how this book is to be read so as to be understood. – It aims to convey a single thought. But in spite of all my efforts, I could not find a shorter way of conveying the thought than the whole of this book. – I believe it is the idea that people have sought out for such a long time under the heading of philosophy, which is why scholars of history have thought it to be as impossible to discover as the philosophers' stone, although Pliny had already told them: ‘how much has been considered impossible before it has been done?’ (Natural History, 7, 1).

As this one thought is considered from different sides, it reveals itself respectively as what has been called metaphysics, what has been called ethics, and what has been called aesthetics; and it is only natural that it be all of these, if it really is what I claim it to be.

A system of thoughts must always have an architectonic coherence, i.e. a coherence in which one part always supports another without the second supporting the first, so the foundation stone will ultimately support all the parts without itself being supported by any of them, and the summit will be supported without itself supporting anything. A single thought, on the other hand, however comprehensive it might be, must preserve the most perfect unity.

It is much easier to indicate errors and mistakes in the work of a great mind than to give a clear and complete account of its value. This is because the mistakes are specific and finite and we can review each one, whereas it is a mark of genius that the excellence of its works is unfathomable and inexhaustible; they will not become obsolete, but will continue to be instructive for centuries on end. The perfected masterpiece of a truly great mind will always have so profound and far-reaching an effect on the entire human race that we cannot calculate how far geographically and temporally its illuminating influence will extend. This will always be the case, because however rich and accomplished the age might be in which the masterpiece appeared, genius will always rise up like a palm tree above the ground in which it is rooted.

But such profound and far-reaching effects cannot appear very quickly, because there is such a vast distance between the genius and the usual run of humanity.

The final part of our discussion declares that it will be the most serious, since it deals with human actions, which are of direct concern to everyone; no one is unfamiliar with or indifferent to such a topic. In fact, it is so natural for people to relate everything to action that they will always consider that part of any systematic discussion which concerns deeds to be the culmination of the whole work, at least to the extent that it is of interest to them, and will accordingly pay serious attention to this part, if to no other. – In the present context, the discussion that follows is what is generally referred to as practical philosophy, in contrast to the theoretical philosophy that has so far been our concern. But in my opinion, philosophy is always theoretical, since what is essential to it is that it treats and investigates its subject-matter (whatever that may be) in a purely contemplative manner, describing without prescribing. On the other hand, for it to become practical, guide action, shape character – these are long-standing demands, and mature insight should encourage us to give them up once and for all.

‘The world is my representation’: – this holds true for every living, cognitive being, although only a human being can bring it to abstract, reflective consciousness: and if he actually does so he has become philosophically sound. It immediately becomes clear and certain to him that he is not acquainted with either the sun or the earth, but rather only with an eye that sees a sun, with a hand that feels an earth, and that the surrounding world exists only as representation, that is, exclusively in relation to something else, the representing being that he himself is. – If any a priori truth can be asserted, then this is it; for this truth expresses the form of all possible and conceivable experience. This form is more universal than any other form, more universal than time, space and causality, which, in fact, presuppose it. If each of these forms (which we have recognized as so many particular forms of the principle of sufficient reason) applies only to a particular class of representations, then by contrast, subject/object dichotomy is the general form of all these classes. It is the only form under which any representation – whatever kind it may be, abstract or intuitive, pure or empirical – is possible or even conceivable.

It is not to my contemporaries, it is not to my compatriots – it is to humanity itself that I entrust my now-completed work, in the confidence that humanity will find some value in it, even if this value will only gain recognition belatedly, this being the inevitable fate of all good things. It can only be for humanity, not for the generation that hurries past, caught up in the delusions of the moment, that my mind has unceasingly devoted itself to its work, almost against my will, throughout the course of a long life. Even the lack of interest could not shake my faith in its value during this time; I constantly saw the false, the bad, and finally the absurd and nonsensical enjoying general admiration and esteem, and reflected that if people who know how to recognize what is genuine and true were not so rare as to be sought in vain for twenty years together, then those who are able to produce it would not be so few that their works afterwards constitute an exception to the transitory nature of earthly things, so that we would lose the comforting prospect of posterity, which constitutes a necessary source of strength for everyone with a lofty goal. – Nobody who seriously takes on and pursues a problem that does not result in material advantage can count on the sympathy of his contemporaries.

Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Representation was first published in Leipzig at the end of 1818 (with 1819 as the date on its title page). It consisted of a single volume, and aimed, as its 30-year-old author stated in his preface, ‘to convey a single thought’. He went on to confess, however, that ‘in spite of all my efforts, I could not find a shorter way of conveying the thought than the whole of this book’, a book that ran to over 700 pages and was not a little ambitious, ranging through epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of mind and action, aesthetics and philosophy of art, to ethics, themeaning of life and the philosophy of religion, in an attempt to account for nothing less than the world: the nature of our cognition or knowledge of reality and how it relates to reality itself, the nature of our existence and the existence of everything in the world, what is and is not of value in existence, the pain of the human condition and the possibility of deliverance from it. Schopenhauer rounds off his book with a detailed and incisive critique of the philosophy of Kant, whom he admired and respected, but to whom he boldly applied Voltaire's saying ‘C'est le privilège du vrai génie, et surtout du génie qui ouvre une carrière, de faire impunément de grandes fautes’ (It is the privilege of true genius, and above all the genius who opens a new path, to make great errors with impunity) – words we may well have occasion to apply to Schopenhauer himself.

What is true and genuine would gain ground in the world more easily if those who are incapable of expressing it would not at the same time conspire to suppress it. This circumstance has already delayed and impeded many things that could have done the world some good, even where it has not stifled them completely. The consequence of this to me has been that although I was only thirty when the first edition of this work appeared, I am only seeing this third edition in my seventy-second year. I find consolation for this in Petrarch's words: ‘If someone who has been running all day arrives in the evening, it is enough’ (On True Wisdom, p. 140). I too have finally arrived and have the satisfaction of seeing the beginnings of my influence at the end of my career, with the hope that this influence, according to an old rule, will last all the longer, since it was so late starting out.–

The reader will not miss anything in this third edition that was contained in the second, but will receive considerably more, since with all the additions it runs 136 pages longer than the second edition, although it has the same type.

Seven years after the appearance of the second edition I published the two volumes of Parerga and Paralipomena.

Schopenhauer is one of the great original writers of the nineteenth century, and a unique voice in the history of thought. His central concept of the will leads him to regard human beings as striving irrationally and suffering in a world that has no purpose, a condition redeemed by the elevation of aesthetic consciousness and finally overcome by the will's self-denial and a mystical vision of the self as one with the world as a whole. He is in some ways the most progressive post-Kantian, an atheist with profound ideas about the human essence and the meaning of existence which point forward to Nietzsche, Freud and existentialism. He was also the first major Western thinker to seek a synthesis with Eastern thought. Yet at the same time he undertakes an ambitious global metaphysics of a conservative, more or less pre-Kantian kind, and is driven by a Platonic vision of escape from empirical reality into a realm of higher knowledge.

Schopenhauer was born in 1788, and by 1809 had gone against his family's expectations of a career as a merchant and embarked on a university career. He completed his doctoral dissertation On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason in 1813, then spent several years in intensive preparation of what became the major work of his life, The World as Will and Representation, which was published at the end of 1818, with 1819 on the title page.

In the First Book, the world was presented as mere representation, object for a subject; in the Second Book we considered this world from its other side and found that it is also will, and this proved to be the only thing the world is, apart from representation. In recognition of this fact we went on to name the world as representation (both as a whole and in its parts) the objecthood of the will, which accordingly means: the will become object, i.e. representation. We may further recall that such an objectivation of the will had many, albeit determinate, levels at which the essence of the will enters representation (i.e. presents itself as an object) with gradually increasing degrees of clarity and perfection. We already recognized these levels as Plato's Ideas, in so far as they are nothing but particular species, or the original, unchanging forms and qualities of all natural bodies, inorganic no less than organic, as well as the universal forces that manifest themselves according to natural laws. Taken together, these Ideas present themselves in countless individuals and details, relating to these as model to imitations.