When asked where he would like to be buried, Schopenhauer said, "Anywhere; they will find me," and the gravestone at Frankfort only says "Arthur Schopenhauer," without even his birth or death dates. The pessimist Schopenhauer had a sufficiently upbeat conviction that his message to the world would eventually be heard—a conviction that never failed him throughout a lifetime of disappointments, of neglect in places where perhaps he would have most cherished appreciation; a conviction that only partially manifested itself a few years before his passing. Schopenhauer never shied away from expressing his confidence in himself. He was neither opportunistic nor conciliatory.



The essays in this collection have an interest, if not entirely separate from one another, at least of a sufficiently independent interest to enable them to be considered on their own merits, without relation to Schopenhauer's main idea, despite the fact that everything he wrote was written more or less as evidence to support his main philosophical thesis, his unifying philosophical principle. And if one may dissociate them for a time (their author would have hardly allowed it! ), one feels as though one is entering an area of critique where opinions can hardly differ. This consensus regarding his thought is untrue; he is one of the philosophers who is most frequently mistreated and has frequently been thoroughly explained and debunked.