Essays and Aphorisms

Nov 12, 2025 5:59 PM

Author:Arthur Schopenhauer,R. J. Hollingdale

One of the greatest philosophers of the nineteenth century, Schopenhauer (1788-1860) believed that human action is determined not by reason but by 'will' - the blind and irrational desire for physical existence. This selection of his writings on religion, ethics, politics, women, suicide, books and many other themes is taken from Schopenhauer's last work, Parerga and Paralipomena, which he published in 1851. These pieces depict humanity as locked in a struggle beyond good and evil, and each individual absolutely free within a Godless world, in which art, morality and self-awareness are our only salvation. This innovative - and pessimistic - view has proved powerfully influential upon philosophy and art, directly affecting the work of Nietzsche, Wittgenstein and Wagner among others.

Reviews

A powerful study of lust, degradation and fantasy

—— Observer

It says something about the loneliness, about the craving for love, about the relation between master and slave and between white and black, and about man's earthly anguish and longing for salvation - in a way you do not easily escape from once it has gripped you

—— Andre Brink

The writing and mood are a remarkable piece of sustained intensity... One false word could have ruined this short tour de force completely. It never does

—— Daily Telegraph

An intellectual lyric which sings the absence of history, the electric lull before history breaks... As a piece of cultural psychoanalysis and diagnosis, it's glitteringly precise

—— Tom Paulin

A truly terrifying horror story with some interestingly radical underpinnings

—— I-D

Mr Greens' extraordinary power of plot-making, of suspense and of narration...moves continuously both in time and space and in emotion

—— The Times

His style is spare, that's what is so beautiful. His novels are genuine romans philosophies - novels illustrating ideas

—— Piers Paul Read

In a class by himself...the ultimate chronicler of twentieth-century man’s consciousness and anxiety

—— William Golding

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