Schopenhauer, Arthur(1788–1860)
Arthur Schopenhauer was a German philosopher of pessimism who gave the will a leading place in his metaphysics. He was born in Danzig. His father, a successful businessman of partly Dutch ancestry, was an admirer of Voltaire and was imbued with a keen dislike of absolutist governments. When Danzig surrendered to the Prussians in 1793, the family moved to Hamburg and remained there until the father's death (apparently by suicide) in 1805. Schopenhauer's mother was a novelist who in later years established a salon in Weimar, which brought him into contact with a number of literary figures, including Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. His relations with his mother, however, were bitter and antagonistic and eventually led to a more or less complete estrangement.
Education
Schopenhauer's early education was somewhat unconventional. He spent two years in France in the charge of a friend of his father, and for another period he accompanied his parents on a prolonged tour of France, England (where he attended school in London for several months), Switzerland, and Austria. After his father's death he was tutored privately in the classics for a time and then entered the University of Göttingen as a medical student, studying, among other subjects, physics, chemistry, and botany.
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